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TALES AND SKETCHES. 



PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY 
EDINBURGH AND LONDON 



TALES AND SKETCHES. 



BY 

HUGH MILLER, 

AUTHOR OF "THE OLD RED SANDSTONE," (< MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,' 
" THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS," ETC. 



EDITED, WITH A PREFACE, BY MRS MILLER. 



tfourtfc tf fcition. 



EDINBURGH: 

WILLIAM P, NIMMO, 
1870. 






•XCHANGS 

BAR 10 1910 



3 



f 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



The following " Tales and Sketches" were written at an 
early period of the author's career, during the first years 
of his married life, before he had attempted to carry any 
part of the world on his shoulders in the shape of a 
public newspaper, and found it by no means a comfort- 
able burden. Yet possibly the period earlier still, when 
he produced his " Scenes and Legends/' had been more 
favourable for a kind of writing which required in any 
measure the exercise of the imagination. The change 
to him was very great, from a life of constant employ- 
ment in the open air, amid the sights and sounds of 
nature, to "the teasing monotony of one which tasked 
his intellectual powers without exercising them." Hence, 
partly, it may be imagined, the intensity of his sympathy 
with the poet Ferguson. The greater number of these 
Tales were composed literally over the midnight lamp, 
after returning late in the evening from a long day's 



vi PREFACE. 

work over the ledger and the balance-sheet. Tired 
though he was, his mind could not stagnate : he must 
write. I do not mention these circumstances at all by 
way of apology. It has struck me, indeed, that the 
Tales are nearly all of a pensive or tragical cast, and 
that in congenial circumstances they might have had a 
more joyous and elastic tone, in keeping with a healthier 
condition of the nervous system. Yet their defects must 
undoubtedly belong to the mind of their author. I am 
far from being under the delusion that he was, or was 
ever destined to be, a Walter Scott or Charles Dickens. 
The faculties of plot and drama, which find their scope 
in the story and the novel, were among the weakest, 
instead of the strongest, of his powers. Yet I am deceived 
if the lovers and students of Hugh Miller s works will not 
find in the "Tales and Sketches'* some matter of special 
interest. In the first three there are, I think, glimpses 
into his own inner life, such as he, with most men 
of reserved and dignified character, would choose rather 
to personify in another than to make a parade of m 
their own person, when coming forward avowedly to 
write of themselves. And, then, if he could have held 
a conversation with Robert Burns, so that all the world 
might hear, I think there are few who would not have 
listened with some curiosity. In his " Recollections of 
Burns" we have his own side of such conversation; for 



PREFACE. vii 

it seems evident that it is himself that he has set a-travel- 
ling and a-talking in the person of Mr Lindsay. 

But of Burns' share in the dialogue the reader is the 
best judge. Some may hold that he is too like Hugh 
Miller himself, — too philosophic in idea, and too pure in 
sentiment. In regard to this, we can only remind such, 
that Burns' prose was not like his poetry, nor his ideal 
like his actual life. 

Unquestionably my husband had a very strong sympathy 
with many points in the character of Burns. His thorough 
integrity, — his noble independence, which disdained to 
place his honest opinions at the mercy of any man or set 
of men, — his refusal to barter his avowal of the worth and 
dignity of man for the smiles and patronage of the great, 
even after he had tasted the sweets of their society, which 
is a very different matter from such avowal before that time, 
if any one will fairly think of it, — all this, with the 
acknowledged sovereignty of the greater genius, made an 
irresistible bond of brotherhood between Miller and Burns. 
But to the grosser traits of the poet's character my hus- 
band's eyes were perfectly open ; and grieved indeed should 
I be if it could for a moment be supposed that he lent the 
weight of his own purer moral character to the failings, and 
worse than failings, of the other. Over these he mourned, 
he grieved, — I believe he would at any time have given the 
life of his body for the life of his brother's soul. Above all 



viii PREFACE. 

he deplored that the all-prevailing power of Christian love 
was never brought to bear on the heart of this greatest of 
Scotland's sons. If Thomas Chalmers had been in the 
place of Russell, who knows what might have been ? But, 
doubtless, God in His providence had wise purposes to 
serve. It is often by such instruments that He scourges 
and purifies His Church. For, let us not forget, that 
scenes such as are depicted in the " Holy Fair," however 
painful to our better feelings, were strictly and literally true. 
This I have myself heard from an eye-witness, who could 
not have been swayed by any leanings towards the anti- 
puritan side : and, doubtless, many others are aware of 
testimony on the same side of equal weight. 

We may hope that the time is passing away when the 
more exceptionable parts of Burns' character and writings 
are capable of working mischief, at least among the higher 
and middle classes. It is cause of thankfulness, that in re- 
gard to such, and with him as with others, there is a sort 
of purifying process goes on, which leaves the higher and 
finer elements of genius to float buoyantly, and fulfil their 
own destiny in the universal plan, while the grosser are 
left to sink like lead in the mighty waters. Thus it is 
in those portions of society already refined and elevated. 
But there is yet a portion of the lower strata where mid- 
night orgies continue to prevail, and where every idea of 
pleasure is connected with libertinism and the bottle ; and 



PRE FA CE. ix 

there the worst productions of Burns are no doubt still rife, 
and working as a deadly poison. Even to a superior class 
of working-men, who are halting between two opinions, 
there is danger from the very mixture of good and evil in 
the character and writings of the poet. They cannot for- 
get that he who wrote " The cock may craw, the day may 
daw, yet still we'll taste the barley bree," wrote likewise 
the immortal song, " A man ; s a man for a ? that ; " and they 
determine, or are in danger of determining, to follow the 
object of their worship with no halting step. Doubtless, 
political creed and the accidents of birth do still colour the 
individual estimate of Burns and his writings. It is but of 
late that we have seen society torn, on occasion of the 
centenary of the poet, by conflicting opinions as to the 
propriety of observing it; and many would fain have it 
supposed that the religious and anti-religious world were 
ranged on opposite sides. But it was not so. There were 
thoroughly good and religious men, self-made, who could 
not forget that Burns had been the champion of their order, 
and had helped to win for them respect by the power of 
his genius ; while there were others — religious men of old 
family — who could remember nothing but his faults. I 
remember spending one or two evenings about that time 
in the society of a well-born, earnestly religious, and highly 
estimable gentleman, who reprobated Burns, and scoffed at 
the idea that a man could be a man for a' that. He mi^ht 



x PREFACE. 

belong to a limited class; for well I know that among 
peers there are as ardent admirers of Burns as among 
peasants. All I would say is, that even religious feelings 
may take edge and bitterness from other causes. But to 
the other class, — those who from loyalty and gratitude are 
apt to follow Burns too far, — well I know that my husband 
would have said, " Receive all genius as the gift of God, 
but never let it be to you as God. It ought never to 
supersede the exercise of your own moral sense, nor can 
it ever take the place of the only infallible guide, — the 
Word of God." 

But I beg the reader's pardon for digressing thus, when I 
ought to be pursuing the proper business of a preface, 
which is, to state any explanatory circumstances that may 
be necessary in connexion with the work in hand. 

The " Recollections of Ferguson " are exquisitely painful 
— so much so, that I would fain have begun with some- 
thing brighter; but these two contributions being the most 
important, and likewise the first in order of a series, they 
seemed to fall into the beginning as their natural place. I 
have gone over the Life of Ferguson, which the reader may 
do for himself, to see whether there is any exaggeration in 
the " Recollections." I find them all perfectly faithful to 
the facts. The neglected bard, the stone cell, the straw 
pallet, the stone paid for by a brother bard out of his 
own straitened means, are not flattering to the " Embro' 



PREFACE. xi 

Gentry \ " but amid a great deal of flattery, a little truth is 
worth remembering. On the other hand, it rejoices one to 
think that Ferguson's death-bed, on the heavenward side, 
was not dark. The returning reason, the comforts of the 
Word of Life, are glimpses of God's providence and grace 
that show gloriously amid the otherwise outer darkness of 
those depths. 

The sort of literature of superstition revived or retained 
in "The Lykewake," there are a great many good people 
who think the world would be better without. 

It chanced to me some three years ago, when residing 
in a sea-bathing village, and sitting one day on a green 
turf bank overlooking the sea, to hear a conversation in 
which this point was brought very prominently forward. 
A party, consisting of a number of young people, accom- 
panied by their papa, a young French lady who was either 
governess or friend, and a gentleman in the garb of a 
clergyman, either friend or tutor, seated themselves very 
near me ; and it was proposed by the elder gentleman 
that a series of stories should be told for the amusement 
and edification of the young people. A set of stories 
and anecdotes were accordingly begun, and very pleasingly 
told chiefly by the clergyman, — friend or tutor. Among 
others was a fairy tale entitled "Green Sleeves," to 
which the name of Hugh Miller was appended, and 
which evoked great applause from the younger members 



xii PREFACE. 

of the party, but regarding which, the verdict of papa, 
very emphatically delivered, was, "/ approve of fairies 
neither in green sleeves nor white sleeves. However," — 
after a pause, during which he seemed to be revolving 
in his mind any possible use for the like absurdities, — 
"they may serve to show us the blessings of the more 
enlightened times in which we live, when schools for 
the young, and sciences for all ages, have banished such 
things from the world/' So, with this utilitarian view 
of the subject, let us rest satisfied, unless we are of those 
who, feeling that the human mind is a harp of many 
strings, believe that it is none the worse for having the 
music of even its minor chords awaked at times by a 
skilful hand. 

I am unable to say whether "Bill Whyte" be a real 
story, ever narrated by a bona fide tinker of the name, 
or no. I am rather inclined to think that it is not, 
because I recognise in it several incidents drawn from 
" Uncle Sandy's" Experiences in Egypt, such as the hover- 
ing of the flight of little birds, scared and terrified, over 
the smoke and noise of battle, the encampment in the 
midst of a host of Turks' bones, &c. 

With the " Young Surgeon " I was myself acquainted. 
It is a sketch, strictly true. 

Owing to a mistake, there are three stories which find 
themselves in this volume, which the reader will likewise 



PREFACE, xiii 

find in "Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland. " 
These are, " The Widow of Dunskaith," the story of 
11 George Ross the Scotch Agent," and that of * M'Culloch 
the Mechanician." When the plan of the "Tales and 
Sketches" occurred to me, I was thinking over the five 
or six opening tales, which were written for " Wilson's 
Tales of the Borders," during, as I have said, the first two 
years of their author's married life. I remembered that he 
had likewise written a number of shorter stories for 
Cha77ibers' Journal at the same period ; and as the 
"Scenes and Legends " had been written before our 
marriage, it did not occur to me that there could possibly 
be any repetition. I found, however, when the printing 
had gone somewhat too far, that, by the kind permission of 
the Messrs Chambers, the greater part of what had ap- 
peared in their Journal had been incorporated with the 
"Scenes and Legends" in a later edition. Had I not 
overlooked or forgotten this, I would have found a place 
for " Letters on the Herring Fishery," which are, in fact, 
a series of sketches, and, in the opinion of many, equal to 
anything my husband ever wrote. This will be done, God 
willing, in another edition ;* and, in the meantime, it is 
hoped that such readers as prefer the useful to the imagina- 
tive will be not unwelcomely reminded of two very excel- 
lent models for those who wish to rise and those who have 
* As is now done in the present re-issue by Mr Nimmo. 



xiv PREFACE. 

risen. Of the same character is " The story of the Scotch 
Merchant of the Eighteenth Century," written originally at 
the request of a near relative of Mr Forsyth, for private 
circulation among a few friends, and now for the first time 
given to the public by the kind consent of the surviving 
relatives. 

LYDIA MILLER. 

December 23, 1862. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON, ..... I 

RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS, . . . . • J3 

THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL, . . . . . Il8 

LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY, .... I48 

THE LYKEWAKE, . . . . . . .201 

BILL WHYTE, ....... 239 

THE YOUNG SURGEON, ...... 276 

A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF A SCOTCH MERCHANT OF 

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, .... 295 



TALES AND SKETCHES. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 

CHAPTER I. 

" Of Ferguson, the bauld and slee." — Burns. 

I have, I believe, as little of the egotist in my composition 
as most men; nor would I deem the story of my life, 
though by no means unvaried by incident, of interest enough 
to repay the trouble of either writing or perusing it, were it 
the story of my own life only ; but, though an obscure man 
myself, I have been singularly fortunate in my friends. The 
particoloured tissue of my recollections is strangely inter- 
woven, if I may so speak, with pieces of the domestic history 
of men whose names have become as familiar to our ears as 
that of our country itself; and I have been induced to struggle 
with the delicacy which renders one unwilling to speak much 
of one's-self, and to overcome the dread of exertion natural 
to a period of life greatly advanced, through a desire of 
preserving to my countrymen a few notices, which would 
otherwise be lost to them of two of their greatest favourites* 



2 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

I could once reckon among my dearest and most familiar 
friends, Robert Burns and Robert Ferguson. 

It is now rather more than sixty years since I studied for 
a few weeks at the University of St Andrews. I was the 
son of very poor parents, who resided in a seaport town on 
the west coast of Scotland. My father was a house-car- 
penter, — a quiet, serious man, of industrious habits, and great 
simplicity of character, but miserably depressed in his cir- 
cumstances, through a sickly habit of body. • My mother was 
a warm-hearted, excellent woman, endowed with no ordinary 
share of shrewd good sense and sound feeling, and indefa- 
tigable in her exertions for my father and the family. I was 
taught to read at a very early age, by an old woman in the 
neighbourhood, — such a person as Shenstone describes in 
his u Schoolmistress ; " and, being naturally of a reflective 
turn, I had begun, long ere I had attained my tenth year, to 
derive almost my sole amusement from books. I read in- 
cessantly ; and, after exhausting the shelves of all the neigh- 
bours, and reading every variety of work that fell in my way, 
— from the " Pilgrim's Progress" of Bunyan, and the " Gospel 
Sonnets " of Erskine, to a " Treatise on Fortification " by 
Vauban, and the " History of the Heavens " by the Abb6 
Pluche, — I would have pined away for lack of my accus- 
tomed exercise, had not a benevolent baronet in the neigh- 
bourhood, for whom my father occasionally wrought, taken 
a fancy to me, and thrown open to my perusal a large and 
well-selected library. Nor did his kindness terminate until, 
after having secured to me all of learning that the parish 
school afforded, he had settled me, now in my seventeenth 
year, at the University. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 3 

Youth is the season of warm friendships and romantic 
wishes and hopes. We say of the child, in its first attempts 
to totter along the wall, or when it has first learned to rise 
beside its mother's knee, that it is yet too weak to stand 
alone ; and we may employ the same language in describing 
a young and ardent mind. It is, like the child, too weak to 
stand alone, and anxiously seeks out some kindred mind on 
which to lean. I had had my intimates at school, who, 
though of no very superior cast, had served me, if I may so 
speak, as resting-places, when wearied with my studies, or 
when I had exhausted my lighter reading ; and now, at St 
Andrews, where I knew no one, I began to experience the 
unhappiness of an unsatisfied sociality. My schoolfellows 
were mostly stiff, illiterate lads, who, with a little bad Latin 
and worse Greek, plumed themselves mightily on their 
scholarship ; and I had little inducement to form any inti- 
macies among them ; for of all men the ignorant scholar is 
the least amusing. Among the students of the upper classes, 
however, there was at least one individual with whom I 
longed to be acquainted. He was apparently much about my 
own age, rather below than above the middle size, and rather 
delicately than robustly formed \ but I have rarely seen a 
more elegant figure or more interesting face. His features 
were small, and there was what might perhaps be deemed a 
too feminine delicacy in the whole contour ; but there was 
a broad and very high expansion of forehead, which, even in 
those days, when we were acquainted with only the phreno- 
logy taught by Plato, might be regarded as the index of a 
capacious and powerful mind \ and the brilliant light of his 
large black eyes seemed to give earnest of its activity. 



4 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

" Who, in the name of wonder, is that ?" I inquired of a 
class-fellow, as this interesting-looking young man passed 
me for the first time. 

"A clever but very unsettled fellow from Edinburgh," 
replied the lad; "a capital linguist, for he gained our 
first bursary three years ago ; but our professor says he is 
certain he will never do any good. He cares nothing for 
the company of scholars like himself; and employs himself 
— though he excels, I believe, in English composition — in 
writing vulgar Scotch rhymes, like Allan Ramsay. His 
name is Robert Ferguson." 

I felt from this moment a strong desire to rank among 
the friends of one who cared nothing for the company of such 
men as my class-fellow, and who, though acquainted with the 
literature of England and Rome, could dwell with interest 
on the simple poetry of his native country. 

There is no place in the neighbourhood of St Andrews 
where a leisure hour may be spent more agreeably than among 
the ruins of the cathedral. I was not slow in discovering 
the eligibilities of the spot ; and it soon became one of my 
favourite haunts. One evening, a few weeks after I had 
entered on my course at college, I had seated myself among 
the ruins, in a little ivied nook fronting the setting sun, and 
was deeply engaged with the melancholy Jaques in the forest 
of Ardennes, when, on hearing a light footstep, I looked up, 
and saw the Edinburgh student whose appearance had so 
interested me, not four yards away. He was busied with 
his pencil and his tablets, and muttering, as he went, in a 
half-audible voice, what, from the inflection of the tones, 
seemed to be verse. On seeing me, he started, and, apolo- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 5 

gising in a few hurried but courteous words for what he 
termed the involuntary intrusion, would have passed, but, 
on my rising and stepping up to him, he stood. 

" I am afraid, Mr Ferguson," I said, " 'tis I who owe you 
an apology : the ruins have long been yours, and I am but 
an intruder. But you must pardon me : I have often heard 
of them in the west, where they are hallowed, even more than 
they are here, from their connexion with the history of some 
of our noblest Reformers ; and, besides, I see no place in 
the neighbourhood where Shakespeare can be read to more 
advantage." 

" Ah," said he, taking the volume out of my hand,— " a 
reader of Shakespeare and an admirer of Knox ! I ques- 
tion whether the heresiarch and the poet had much in 
common." 

" Nay, now, Mr Ferguson," I replied, " you are too true 
a Scot to question that. They had much, very much, in 
common. Knox was no rude Jack Cade, but a great and 
powerful-minded man, — decidedly as much so as any of the 
nobler conceptions of the dramatist, — his Caesars, Brutuses, 
or Othellos. Buchanan could have told you that he had 
even much of the spirit of the poet in him, and wanted only 
the art. And just remember how Milton speaks of him in his 
1 Areopagitica/ Had the poet of ' Paradise Lost' thought 
regarding him as it has become fashionable to think and 
speak now, he would hardly have apostrophised him as 
Knox, the reformer of a nation, — a great man animated by 
the Spirit of God" 

"Pardon me," said the young man; "I am little ac- 
quainted with the prose writings of Milton ■ and have, indeed, 



6 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

picked up most of my opinions of Knox at second-hand. 
But I have read his merry account of the murder of Beaton, 
and found nothing to alter my preconceived notions of him 
from either the matter or manner of the narrative. Now 
that I think of it, however, my opinion of Bacon would be 
no very adequate one, were it formed solely from the extract 
of his history of Henry VII. given by Karnes in his late 
publication. Will you not extend your walk?" 

We quitted the ruins together, and went sauntering along 
the shore. There was a rich sunset glow on the water, and 
the hills that rise on the opposite side of the frith stretched 
their undulating line of azure under a gorgeous canopy of 
crimson and gold. My companion pointed to the scene. 
" These glorious clouds," he said, "are but wreaths of vapour; 
and these lovely hills, accumulations of earth and stone. 
And it is thus with all the past, — with the past of our own 
little histories, that borrows so much of its golden beauty 
from the medium through which we survey it, — with the 
past, too, of all history. There is poetry in the remote : the 
bleak hill seems a darker firmament, and the chill wreath 
of vapour a river of fire. And you, sir, seem to have 
contemplated the history of our stern Reformers through this 
poetical medium, till you forget that the poetry was not in 
them, but in that through which you surveyed them." 

" Ah, Mr Ferguson," I replied, "you must permit me to 
make a distinction. I acquiesce fully in the justice of your 
remark : the analogy, too, is nice and striking ; but I would 
fain carry it a little further. Every eye can see the beauty 
of the remote ; but there is a beauty in the near, — an interest 
at least, which every eye cannot see. Each of the thousand 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 7 

little plants that spring up at our feet has an interest and 
beauty to the botanist : the mineralogist would find some- 
thing to engage him in every little stone. And it is thus 
with the poetry of life : all have a sense of it in the remote 
and the distant \ but it is only the men who stand high in 
the art — its men of profound science — that can discover it in 
the near. The mediocre poet shares but the commoner gift, 
and so he seeks his themes in ages or countries far removed 
from his own ; whilst the man of nobler powers, knowing 
that all nature is instinct with poetry, seeks and finds it in 
the men and scenes in his immediate neighbourhood. As to 

our Reformers" 

" Pardon me," said the young poet; " the remark strikes 
me, and, ere we lose it in something else, I must furnish you 
with an illustration. There is an acquaintance of mine, a 
lad much about my own age, greatly addicted to the study 
of poetry. He has been making verses all his life-long : he 
began ere he learned to write them even ; and his judg- 
ment has been gradually overgrowing his earlier composi- 
tions, as you see the advancing tide rising on the beach and 
obliterating the prints on the sand. Now I have observed 
that in all his earlier compositions he went far from home : 
he could not attempt a pastoral without first transporting 
himself to the vales of Arcadia ; or an ode to Pity or Hope 
without losing the warm, living sentiment, in the dead, cold 
personification of the Greek. The Hope and Pity he ad- 
dressed were, not the undying attendants of human nature, 
but the shadowy spectres of a remote age. Now, however, 
I feel that a change has come over me. I seek for poetry 
among the fields and cottages of my own land. I — a — a— 



8 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

the friend of whom I speak But I interrupted your 

remark on the Reformers." 

" Nay," I replied, " if you go on so, I would much rather 
listen than speak. I only meant to say that the Knoxes and 
Melvilles of our country have been robbed of the admiration 
and sympathy of many a kindred spirit, by the strangely 
erroneous notions that have been abroad regarding them for 
at least the last two ages. Knox, I am convinced, would 
have been as great as Jeremy Taylor, if not even greater." 

We sauntered along the shore till the evening had dark- 
ened into night, lost in an agreeable interchange of thought. 
" Ah ! " at length exclaimed my companion, " I had almost 
forgotten my engagement, Mr Lindsay; but it must not part 
us. You are a stranger here, and I must introduce you to 
some of my acquaintance. There are a few of us — choice 
spirits, of course — who meet every Saturday evening at John 
Hogg's; arid I must just bring you to see them. There 
may be much less wit than mirth among us ; but you will 
find us all sober when at the gayest ; and old John will be 
quite a study for you." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 



CHAPTER II. 

,c Say, ye red gowns, that aften here 
Hae toasted cakes to Katie's beer, 
. Gin e'er thir days hae had their peer, 
Sae blythe, sae daft ! 
Ye '11 ne'er again in life's career 
Sit half sae saft." 

— Elegy on Jokji Hogg, 

We returned to town; and, after threading a few of the 
narrower lanes, entered by a low door into a long dark 
room, dimly lighted by a fire. A tall, thin woman was 
employed in skinning a bundle of dried fish at a table in 
a corner. 

"Where's the gudeman, Kate?" said my companion, 
changing the sweet pure English in which he had hitherto 
spoken for his mother tongue. 

" John 's ben in the spence," replied the woman. " Little 
Andrew, the wratch, has been makin' a totum wi' his 
faither's a'e razor ; an' the puir man 's trying to shave him- 
sel' yonder, an' girnan like a sheep's head on the tangs." 

" Oh, the wratch ! the ill-deedie wratch ! " said John, 
stalking into the room in a towering passion, his face 
covered with suds and scratches,—" I might as weel shave 
mysel' wi' a mussel shillet. Rob Ferguson, man, is that 
you?" 

" Wearie warld, John," said the poet, " for a' oor philo- 
sophy." 



io TALES AND SKETCHES. 

" Philosophy ! — it 's but a snare, Rab, — just vanity an' 
vexation o' speerit, as Solomon says. An' isna it clear 
heterodox besides! Ye study, an' study, till your brains 
gang aboot like a whirligig • an' then, like bairns in a boat 
that see the land sailin', ye think it 's the solid yearth that 's 
turnin' roun\ An' this ye ca' philosophy; as if David 
hadna tauld us that the warld sits coshly on the waters, an' 
canna be moved." 

"Hoot, John," rejoined my companion; "it's no me, 
but Jamie Brown, that differs wi' you on thae matters. I 'm 
a Hoggonian, ye ken. The auld Jews were, doubtless, gran' 
Christians; an' wherefore no gude philosophers too? But 
it was cruel o' you to unkennel me this mornin' afore six, 
an' I up sae lang at my studies the nicht afore." 

"Ah, Rob, Rob !" said John, — " studying in Tam Dun's 
kirk. Ye 11 be a minister, like a' the lave." 

" Mendin' fast, John," rejoined the poet. "I was in 
your kirk on Sabbath last, hearing worthy Mr Corkindale. 
Whatever else he may hae to fear, he 's in nae danger o' 
1 thinking his ain thoughts] honest man." 

" In oor kirk !" said John : " ye 're dune, then, wi' pre- 
centin' in yer ain : an' troth, nae wonder. What could hae 
possessed ye to gie up the puir chield's name i' the prayer, 
an' him sittin' at yer lug?" 

I was unacquainted with the circumstance to which he 
alluded, and requested an explanation. " Oh, ye see," said 
John, " Rob, amang a' the ither gifts that he misguides, has 
the gift o' a sweet voice ; an 1 naething less would ser' some 
o' oor professors than to hae him for their precentor. They 
micht as weel hae thocht o' an organ, — it wad be just as 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON, n 

devout; but the soun's everything now, laddie, ye ken, an 1 
the heart naething. Weel, Rob, as ye may think, was less 
than pleased wi' the job, an' tauld them he could whistle 
better than sing; but it wasna that they wanted, and sae it 
behoved him to tak' his seat in the box. An' lest the folk 
should be no pleased wi' a'e key to a'e tune, he gied them, 
for the first twa or three days, a hale bunch to each; an* 
there was never sic singing in St Andrews afore. Weel, 
but for a' that, it behoved him still to precent, though he 
has got rid o' it at last ; for what did he do twa Sabbaths 
agane, but put up drunken Tarn Moffat's name in the 
prayer, — the very chield that was sittin' at his elbow, though 
the minister couldna see him. An' when the puir stibbler 
was prayin' for the reprobate as weel 's he could, a'e half o' 
the kirk was needcessitated to come oot, that they micht 
keep decent, an the ither half to swallow their pocket- 
napkins. But what think ye" 

" Hoot, John, now leave oot the moral," said the poet. 
"Here's a' the lads." 

Half a dozen young students entered as he spoke ; and 
after a hearty greeting, and when he had introduced me to 
them one by one, as a choice fellow of immense reading, 
the door was barred, and we sat down to half a dozen ot 
home-brewed, and a huge platter of dried fish. There was 
much mirth, and no little humour. Ferguson sat at the 
head of the table, and old John Hogg at the foot. I 
thought of Eastcheap, and the revels of Prince Henry ; but 
our Falstaff was an old Scotch Seceder, and our Prince a 
gifted young fellow, who owed all his influence over his 
fellows to the force of his genius alone. 



12 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

" Prythee, Hal," I said, " let us drink to Sir John." 

"Why, yes," said the poet, "with all my heart. Not 
quite so fine a fellow, though, 'bating his Scotch honesty. 
Half Sir John's genius would have served for an epic poet, 
— half his courage for a hero." 

" His courage !" exclaimed one of the lads. 

" Yes, Willie, his courage, man. Do you think a coward 
could have run away with half the coolness ? With a tithe 
of the courage necessary for such a retreat, a man would 
have stood and fought till he died. Sir John must have 
been a fine fellow in his youth." 

" In mony a droll way may a man fa' on the drap drink," 
remarked John; "an' meikle ill, dootless, does it do in 
takin' afT the edge o' the speerit, — the mair if the edge be a 
fine razor edge, an' no the edge o' a whittle. I mind, about 
fifty years ago, when I was a slip o' a callant " 

" Losh, John !" exclaimed one of the lads, " hae ye been 
fechtin' wi' the cats? Sic a scrapit face !" 

" Wheesht," said Ferguson ; " we owe the illustration to 
that ; but dinna interrupt the story." 

" Fifty years ago, when I w T as a slip o' a callant," con- 
tinued John, " unco curious, an' fond o' kennin' everything, 
as callants will be " 

" Hoot, John," said one of the students, interrupting him, 
" can ye no cut short, man ? Rob promised last Saturday 
to gie us, ' Fie, let us a' to the Bridal,' and ye see the ale 
an' the nicht's baith wearin' dune." 

" The song, Rob, the song !" exclaimed half a dozen 
voices at once ; and John's story was lost in the clamour. 

"Nay, now," said the good-natured poet, "that 's less than 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 13 

kind : the auld man's stories are aye worth the hearing, an* 
he can relish the auld-warld fisher song wi' the best o' ye. 
But we maun hae the story yet." 

He struck up the old Scotch ditty, " Fie, let us a' to the 
Bridal," which he sung with great power and brilliancy] for 
his voice was a richly-modulated one, and there was a ful- 
ness of meaning imparted to the words, which wonderfully 
heightened the effect. " How strange it is," he remarked 
to me, when he had finished, " that our English neighbours 
deny us humour ! The songs of no country equal our Scotch 
ones in that quality. Are you acquainted with ■ The Gude- 
wife of Auchtermuchty?' " 

" Well," I replied; "but so are not the English. It strikes 
me that, with the exception of Smollett's novels, all our 
Scotch humour is locked up in our native tongue. No man 
can employ in works of humour any language of which he 
is not a thorough master ; and few of our Scotch writers, 
with all their elegance, have attained the necessary com- 
mand of that colloquial English which Addison and Swift 
employed when they were merry." 

" A braw redd delivery," said John, addressing me. "Are 
ye gaun to be a minister too ?" 

" Not quite sure yet," I replied. 

" Ah !" rejoined the old man, "'twas better for the Kirk 
when the minister just made himsel' ready for it, an' then 
waited till he kent whether it wanted him. There 's young 
Rob Ferguson beside you " 

" Setting oot for the Kirk," said the young poet, interrupt- 
ing him, " and yet drinkin' ale on Saturday at e'en wi' old 
John Hogg." 



14 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

" Weel, weel, laddie, it 's easier for the best o' us to find 
fault wi' ithers than to mend oorsels. Ye have the head, 
onyhow; but Jamie Brown tells me it's a doctor ye're 
gaun to be, after a'." 

" Nonsense, John Hogg : I wonder how a man o' your 
standing " 

" Nonsense, I grant you," said one of the students; "but 
true enough for a' that, Bob. Ye see, John, Bob and I were 
at the King's Muirs last Saturday, and ca'ed at the pendicle, 
in the passing, for a cup o' whey, when the gudewife tell't 
us there was ane o' the callants, who had broken into the 
milk-house twa nichts afore, lying ill o' a surfeit. ' Danger- 
ous case,' said Bob; 'but let me see him : I have studied to 
small purpose if I know nothing o' medicine, my good 
woman.' Weel, the woman was just glad enough to bring 
him to the bedside ; an' no wonder : ye never saw a wiser 
phiz in your lives; — Dr Dumpie's was naething till't; an', 
after he had sucked the head o' his stick for ten minutes, 
and fand the loon's pulse, an' asked mair questions than the 
gudewife liked to answer, he prescribed. But, losh ! sic a 
prescription ! A day's fasting and twa ladles o' nettle kail 
was the gist o't; but then there went mair Latin to the tail 
o' that than our neebour the doctor ever had to lose." 

But I dwell too long on the conversation of this evening. 
I feel, however, a deep interest in recalling it to memory. 
The education of Ferguson was of a twofold character, — he 
studied in the schools and among the people ; but it was m 
the latter tract alone that he acquired the materials of all his 
better poetry ; and I feel as if, for at least one brief evening, 
I was admitted to the privileges of a class-fellow, and sat 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 15 

with him on the same form. The company broke up a little 
after ten; and I did not again hear of John Hogg till I read 
his elegy, about four years after, among the poems of my 
friend. It is by no means one of the happiest pieces in the 
volume, nor, it strikes me, highly characteristic ; but I have 
often perused it with an interest very independent of its 
merits. 



CHAPTER III. 

" But he is weak ; — both man and boy 
Has been an idler in the land."— WORDSWORTH. 

I was attempting to listen, on the evening of the following 
Sunday, to a dull, listless discourse, — one of the discourses 
so common at this period, in which there was fine writing 
without genius, and fine religion without Christianity, — 
when a person who had just taken his place beside me 
tapped me on the shoulder, and thrust a letter into my 
hand. It was my newly-acquired friend of the previous 
evening, and we shook hands heartily under the pew. 

" That letter has just been handed me by an acquaintance 
from your part of the country," he whispered : " I trust it 
contains nothing unpleasant" 

I raised it to the light ; and, on ascertaining that it was 
sealed and edged with black, rose and quitted the church, 
followed by my friend. It intimated, in two brief lines, that 
my patron, the baronet, had been killed by a fall from his 
horse a few evenings before, and that, dying intestate, the 



16 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

allowance which had hitherto enabled me to prosecute my 
studies necessarily dropped. I crumpled up the paper in my 
hand. 

"You have learned something very unpleasant," said 
Ferguson. " Pardon me, — I have no wish to intrude ; but, 
if at all agreeable, I would fain spend the evening with you." 

My heart filled, and, grasping his hand, I briefly intimated 
the purport of the communication ; and we walked out to- 
gether in the direction of the ruins. 

" It is perhaps as hard, Mr Ferguson," I said, " to fall 
from one's hopes as from the place to which they pointed. 
I was ambitious — too ambitious, it may be — to rise from 
that level on which man acts the part of a machine, and 
tasks merely his body, to that higher level on which he 
performs the proper part of a rational creature, and employs 
only his mind. But that ambition need influence me no 
longer. My poor mother, too — I had trusted to be of use 
to her." 

" Ah ! my friend," said Ferguson, " I can tell you of a case 
quite as hopeless as your own — perhaps more so. But it 
will make you deem my sympathy the result of mere selfish- 
ness. In scarce any respect do our circumstances differ." 

We had reached the ruins. The evening was calm and 
mild as when I had walked out on the preceding one ; but 
the hour was earlier, and the sun hung higher over the hill. 
A newly-formed grave occupied the level spot in front of the 
little ivied corner. 

" Let us seat ourselves here," said my companion, " and 
I will tell you a story — I am afraid, a rather tame one ; for 
there is nothing of adventure in it, and nothing of incident; 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 17 

but it may at least show you that I am not unfitted to be 
your friend. It is now nearly two years since I lost my 
father. He was no common man, — common neither in 
intellect nor in sentiment : but, though he once fondly 
hoped it should be otherwise, — for in early youth he in- 
dulged in all the dreams of the poet, — he now fills a grave 
as nameless as the one before us. He was a native of 
Aberdeenshire ; but held latterly an inferior situation in the 
office of the British Linen Company in Edinburgh, where I 
was born. Ever since I remember him, he had awakened 
too fully to the realities of life, and they pressed too hard 
on his spirits, to leave him space for the indulgence of his 
earlier fancies ; but he could dream for his children, though 
not for himself; or, as I should perhaps rather say, his 
children fell heir to all his more juvenile hopes of fortune, 
and influence, and space in the world's eye ; and, for him- 
self, he indulged in hopes of a later growth and firmer 
texture, which pointed from the present scene of things to 
the future. I have an only brother, my senior by several 
years, — a lad of much energy, both physical and mental; 
in brief, one of those mixtures of reflection and activity 
which seem best formed for rising in the world. My father 
deemed him most fitted for commerce, and had influence 
enough to get him introduced into the counting-house of a 
respectable Edinburgh merchant. I was always of a graver 
turn, — in part, perhaps, the effect of less robust health, — 
and me he intended for the Church. I have been a 
dreamer, Mr Lindsay, from my earliest years, — prone to 
melancholy, and fond of books and of solitude ; and the 
peculiarities of this temperament the sanguine old man, 



18 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

though no mean judge of character, had mistaken for a 
serious and reflective disposition. You are acquainted with 
literature, and know something, from books at least, of the 
lives of literary men. Judge, then, of his prospect of use- 
fulness in any profession, who has lived ever since he knew 
himself among the poets. My hopes from my earliest years 
have been hopes of celebrity as a writer, — not of wealth, or 
of influence, or of accomplishing any of the thousand aims 
which famish the great bulk of mankind with motives. You 
will laugh at me. There is something so emphatically 
shadowy and unreal in the object of this ambition, that 
eten the full attainment of it provokes a smile. For who 
does not know 

"'How vain that second life in others' breath, — 
The estate which wits inherit after death ! ' 

And what can be more fraught with the ludicrous than a 
union of this shadowy ambition with mediocre parts and 
attainments ? But I digress. 

" It is now rather more than three years since I entered 
the classes here. I competed for a bursary, and was fortu- 
nate enough to secure one. Believe me, Mr Lindsay, I am 
little ambitious of the fame of mere scholarship, and yet I 
cannot express to you the triumph of that day. I had seen 
my poor father labouring far, far beyond his strength, for 
my brother and myself, — closely engaged during the day 
with his duties in the bank, and copying at night in a 
lawyer's office. I had seen, with a throbbing heart, his tall 
wasted frame becoming tremulous and bent, and the gray 
hair thinning on his temples ; and I now felt that I could 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON, ig 

ease him of at least part of the burden. In the excitement 
of the moment, I could hope that I was destined to rise in 
in the world, — to gain a name in it, and something more. 
You know how a slight success grows in importance when 
we can deem it the earnest of future good fortune. I met, 
too, with a kind and influential friend in one of the pro- 
fessors, the late Dr Wilkie, — alas ! good, benevolent man ! 
you may see his tomb yonder beside the wall ; and on my 
return from St Andrews, at the close of the session, I found 
my father on his death-bed. My brother Henry, who had 
been unfortunate, and, I am afraid, something worse, had 
quitted the counting-house, and entered aboard of a man- 
of-war as a common sailor ; and the poor old man, whose 
heart had been bound up in him, never held up his head 
after. 

" On the evening of my father's funeral I could have lain 
down and died. I never before felt how thoroughly I am 
unfitted for the world, — how totally I want strength. My 
father, I have said, had intended me for the Church ; and 
in my progress onward from class to class, and from school 
to college, I had thought but little of each particular step, 
as it engaged me for the time, and nothing of the ultimate 
objects to which it led. All my more vigorous aspirations 
were directed to a remote future, and an unsubstantial 
shadow. But I had witnessed beside my father's bed, what 
had led me seriously to reflect on the ostensible aim for 
which I lived and studied ; and the more carefully I 
weighed myself in the balance, the more did I find myself 
awanting. You have heard of Mr Brown of the Secession, 
the author of the ' Dictionary of the Bible.' He was an 



20 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

old acquaintance of my father's; and, on hearing of his 
illness, had come all the way from Haddington to see him. 
I felt, for the first time, as, kneeling beside his bed, I heard 
my father's breathings becoming every moment shorter and 
more difficult, and listened to the prayers of the clergyman, 
that I had no business in the Church. And thus I still 
continue to feel. ; Twere an easy matter to produce such 
things as pass for sermons among us, and to go respectably 
enough through the mere routine of the profession ; but I 
cannot help feeling that, though I might do all this and 
more, my duty as a clergyman would be still left undone, 
I want singleness of aim, — I want earnestness of heart. 
I cannot teach men effectually how to live well ; I cannot 
show them, with aught of confidence, how they may die 
safe. I cannot enter the Church without acting the part 
of a hypocrite ; and the miserable part of the hypocrite it 
shall never be mine to act. Heaven help me ! I am too 
little a practical moralist myself to attempt teaching morals 
to others. 

" But I must conclude my story, if story it may be 
called. I saw my poor mother and my little sister deprived, 
by my father's death, of their sole stay, and strove to 
exert myself in their behalf. In the day-time I copied in a 
lawyer's office; my nights were spent among the poets. 
You will deem it the very madness of vanity, Mr Lindsay; 
but I could not live without my dreams of literary emi- 
nence. I felt that life would be a blank waste without 
them ; and I feel so still. Do not laugh at my weakness, 
when I say I would rather live in the memory of my 
country than enjoy her fairest lands, — that I dread a name- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 21 

less grave many times more than the grave itself. But I 
am afraid the life of the literary aspirant is rarely a happy 
one ; and I, alas ! am one of the weakest of the class. It 
is of importance that the means of living be not disjoined 
from the end for which w T e live; and I feel, that in my 
case, the disunion is complete. The wants and evils of 
life are around me ; but the energies through which those 
should be provided for, and these warded off, are otherwise 
employed. I am like a man pressing onward through a 
hot and bloody fight, his breast open to every blow, and 
tremblingly alive to the sense of injury and the feeling of 
pain, but totally unprepared either to attack or defend. 
And then, those miserable depressions of spirits to which 
all men who draw largely on their imagination are so 
subject, and that wavering irregularity of effort which seems 
so unavoidably the effect of pursuing a distant and doubt- 
ful aim, and which proves so hostile to the formation of 
every better habit, — alas ! to a steady morality itself. But 
I weary you, Mr Lindsay : besides, my story is told. I am 
groping onward, I know not whither ; and in a few months 
hence, when my last session shall have closed, I shall be 
exactly where you are at present." 

He ceased speaking, and there was a pause of several 
minutes. I felt soothed and gratified. There was a sweet 
melancholy music in the tones of his voice, that sunk to my 
very heart ; and the confidence he reposed in me flattered 
my pride. " How was it," I at length said, " that you were 
the gayest in the party of last night ? " 

a I do not know that I can better answer you," he re- 
plied, " than by telling you a singular dream which I had 



22 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

about the time of my father's death. I dreamed that I had 
suddenly quitted the world, and was journeying, by a long 
and dreary passage, to the place of final punishment. A 
blue, dismal light glimmered along the lower wall of the 
vault; and, from the darkness above, where there flickered a 
thousand undefined shapes, — things without form or outline, 
— I could hear deeply-drawn sighs, and long hollow groans, 
and convulsive sobbings, and the prolonged moanings of an 
unceasing anguish. I was aware, however, though I know 
not how, that these were but the expressions of a lesser 
misery, and that the seats of severer torment were still 
before me. I went on, and on, and the vault widened, and 
the light increased, and the sounds changed. There were 
loud laughters and low mutterings, in the tone of ridicule ; 
and shouts of triumph and exultation ; and, in brief, all the 
thousand mingled tones of a gay and joyous revel. Can 
these, I exclaimed, be the sounds of misery when at the 
deepest? ' Bethink thee/ said a shadowy form beside 
me, — ' bethink thee if it be not so on earth/ And as I 
remembered that it was so, and bethought me of the mad 
revels of shipwrecked seamen and of plague-stricken cities, 
I awoke. But on this subject you must spare me." 

" Forgive me," I said ; " to-morrow I leave college, and 
not with the less reluctance that I must part from you. But 
I shall yet find you occupying a place among the literati 
of our country, and shall remember with pride that you 
were my friend." 

He sighed deeply. " My hopes rise and fall with my 
spirits," he said; "and to-night I am melancholy. Do you 
ever go to buffets with yourself, Mr Lindsay ? Do you ever 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 23 

mock in your sadder moods, the hopes which render you 
happiest when you are gay? Ah ! 'tis bitter warfare when 
a man contends with Hope ! — when he sees her, with little 
aid from the personifying influence, as a thing distinct from 
himself, — a lying spirit, that comes to flatter and deceive 
him. It is thus I see her to-night. 

" See'st thou that grave ? — does mortal know 
Aught of the dust that lies below ? 
'Tis foul, 'tis damp, 'tis void of form, — 
A bed where winds the loathsome worm 
A little heap, mould'ring and brown, 
Like that on flowerless meadow thrown 
By mossy stream, w^hen winter reigns 
O'er leafless woods and wasted plains : 
And yet, that brown, damp, formless heap 
Once glowed with feelings keen and deep ; 
Once eyed the light, once heard each sound 
Of earth, air, wave, that murmurs round. 
But now r , ah ! now, the name it bore, 
Sex, age, or form, is known no more. 
This, this alone, O Hope ! I know 
That once the dust that lies below 
Was, like myself, of human race, 
And made this world its dwelling-place. 
Ah ! this, when death has swept away 
The myriads of life's present day, 
Though bright the visions raised by thee, 
Will all my fame, my history be ! " 

We quitted the ruins, and returned to town. 

" Have you yet formed," inquired my companion, u any 
plan for the future ? " 

" I quit St Andrews," I replied, " to-morrow morning. I 
have an uncle the master of a West Indiaman, now in 
the Clyde. Some years ago I had a fancy for the life of 
a sailor, which has evaporated, however, with many of my 



24 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

other boyish fancies and predilections ; but I am strong 
and active, and it strikes me there is less competition on sea 
at present than on land. A man of tolerable steadiness and 
intelligence has a better chance of rising as a sailor than as 
a mechanic. I shall set out, therefore, with my uncle on 
his first voyage. " 



CHAPTER IV. 

" At first I thought the swankie didna ill, — 
Again I glowr'd, to hear him better still ; 
Bauld, slee, an' sweet, his lines mair glorious grew, 
Glow'd round the heart, an* glanc'd the soul out through." 

— Alexander Wilson. 

I had seen both the Indies and traversed the wide Pacific, 
ere I again set foot on the eastern coast of Scotland. My 
uncle, the shipmaster, was dead, and I was still a common 
sailor ; but I was light-hearted and skilful in my profession, 
and as much inclined to hope as ever. Besides, I had begun 
to doubt — and there cannot be a more consoling doubt when 
one is unfortunate — whether a man may not enjoy as much 
happiness in the lower walks of life as in the upper. In one 
of my later voyages, the vessel in which I sailed had lain for 
several weeks at Boston, in North America — then a scene of 
those fierce and angry contentions which eventually separ- 
ated the colonies from the mother country; and when in this 
place, I had become acquainted, by the merest accident in 
the world, with the brother of my friend the poet. I was 
passing through one of the meaner lanes, when I saw my 
old college friend, as I thought, looking out at me from 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 25 

the window of a crazy wooden building, — a sort of fencing 
academy, much frequented, I was told, by the Federalists 
of Boston. I crossed the lane in two huge strides. 

" Mr Ferguson," I said, — " Mr Ferguson," — for he was 
withdrawing his head, — " do you not remember me ? " 

" Not quite sure," he replied ; " I have met with many 
sailors in my time ; but I must just see." 

He had stepped down to the door ere I had discovered my 
mistake. He was a taller and stronger-looking man than my 
friend, and his senior apparently by six or eight years ; but 
nothing could be more striking than the resemblance which 
he bore to him, both in face and figure. I apologised. 

" But have you not a brother, a native of Edinburgh," I 
inquired, "who studied at St Andrews about four years 
ago ? Never before, certainly, did I see so remarkable a 
likeness" 

" As that which I bear to Robert ? " he said. " Happy 
to hear it. Robert is a brother of whom a man may well be 
proud, and I am glad to resemble him in any way. But you 
must go in with me, and tell me all you know regarding him. 
He was a thin, pale slip of a boy when I left Scotland, — a 
mighty reader, and fond of sauntering into by-holes and cor- 
ners : I scarcely knew what to make of him ; but he has 
made much of himself. His name has been blown far and 
wide within the last two years." 

He showed me through a large waste apartment, furnished 
with a few deal seats, and with here and there a fencing foil 
leaning against the wall, into a sort of closet at the upper 
end, separated from the main room by a partition of un- 
dressed slabs. There was a charcoal stove in the one corner, 



26 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

and a truckle bed in the other ; a few shelves laden with 
books ran along the wail; there was a small chest raised on 
a stool immediately below the window, to serve as a writing- 
desk, and another stool standing beside it. A few cooking 
utensils scattered round the room, and a corner cupboard, 
completed the entire furniture of the place. 

" There is a certain limited number born to be rich, Jack," 
said my new companion, " and I just don't happen to be 
among them ; but I have one stool for myself, you see, and, 
now that I have unshipped my desk, another for a visitor, 
and so get on well enough. " 

I related briefly the story of my intimacy with his brother; 
and we were soon on such terms as to be in a fair way of 
emptying a bottle of rum together. 

" You remind me of old times," said my new acquaint- 
ance. " I am weary of these illiterate, boisterous, long-sided 
Americans, who talk only of politics and dollars. And yet 
there are first-rate men among them too. I met, some years 
since, with a Philadelphia printer, whom I cannot help re- 
garding as one of the ablest, best-informed men I ever con- 
versed with. But there is nothing like general knowledge 
among the average class : a mighty privilege of conceit, 
however." 

"They are just in that stage," I remarked, "in which it 
needs all the vigour of an able man to bring his mind into 
anything like cultivation. There must be many more facili- 
ties of improvement ere the mediocritist can develop him- 
self. He is in the egg still in America, and must sleep 
there till the next age. But when last heard you of your 
brother ? " 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 27 

" Why," he replied, " when all the world heard of him, — ■ 
with the last number of Ruddimarls Magazi?ie. Where can 
you have been bottled up from literature of late ? Why, 
man, Robert stands first among our Scotch poets." 

" Ah ! 'tis long since I have anticipated something like 
that for him/' I said ; " but for the last two years I have 
seen only two books — Shakespeare and the Spectator. 
Pray, do show me some of the magazines." 

The magazines were produced ; and I heard for the first 
time, in a foreign land, and from the recitation of the poet's 
brother, some of the most national and most highly-finished 
of his productions. My eyes filled and my heart wandered 
to Scotland and her cottage homes, as, shutting the book, 
he repeated to me, in a voice faltering with emotion, stanza 
after stanza of the " Farmer's Ingle." 

" Do you not see it ? — do you not see it all ?" exclaimed ' 
my companion ; " the wide, smoky room, with the bright 
turf-fire, the blackened rafters shining above, the straw- 
wrought settle below, the farmer and the farmer's wife, and 
auld grannie and the bairns. Never was there truer paint- 
ing ; and, oh, how it works on a Scotch heart ! But hear 
this other piece." 

He read ■" Sandy and Willie." 

" Far, far ahead of Ramsay !" I exclaimed, — " more ima- 
gination, more spirit, more intellect, and as much truth and 
nature. Robert has gained his end already. Hurra for 
poor old Scotland ! — these pieces must live for ever. But 
do repeat to me the ' Farmer's Ingle' once more." 

We read, one by one, all the poems in the magazine, 
dwelling on each stanza, and expatiating on every recollec- 



28 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

tion of home which the images awakened. My companion 
was, like his brother, a kind, open-hearted man, of superior 
intellect; much less prone to despondency, however, and of 
a more equal temperament Ere we parted, which was not 
until next morning, he had communicated to me all his plans 
for the future, and all his fondly-cherished hopes of returning 
to Scotland with wealth enough to be of use to his friends. 
He seemed to be one of those universal geniuses who do a 
thousand things well, but want steadiness enough to turn 
any of them to good account. He showed me a treatise on 
the use of the sword, which he had just prepared for the 
press, and a series of letters on the stamp act, which had 
appeared from time to time in one of the Boston news- 
papers, and in which he had taken part with the Americans. 

" I make a good many dollars in these stirring times," he 
said. " All the Yankees seem to be of opinion that they 
will be best heard across the water when they have got arms 
in their hands, and have learned how to use them ; and I 
know a little of both the sword and the musket. But the 
warlike spirit is frightfully thirsty, somehow, and consumes 
a world of rum; and so I have not yet begun to make rich." 

He shared with me his supper and bed for the night; and, 
after rising in the morning ere I awoke, and writing a long 
letter for Robert, which he gave me in the hope I might soon 
meet with him, he accompanied me to the vessel, then on 
the eve of sailing, and we parted, as it proved, for ever. I 
know nothing of his after-life, or how or where it termin- 
ated ; but I have learned that, shortly before the death of 
his gifted brother, his circumstances enabled him to send 
his mother a small remittance for the use of the family 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 29 

He was evidently one of the kind-hearted, improvident few 
who can share a very little, and whose destiny it is to have 
only a very little to share. 



CHAPTER V. 

" O Ferguson ! thy glorious parts 
111 suited law's dry, musty arts ! 
My curse upon your whunstane hearts, 

Ye Embrugh gentry ! 
The tithe o' what ye waste at cartes 

Wad stow'd his pantry ! " — Burns. 

I visited Edinburgh for the first time in the latter part of 
the autumn of 1773, about two months after I had sailed 
from Boston. It was on a fine calm morning — one of those 
clear sunshiny mornings of October when the gossamer goes 
sailing about in long cottony threads, so light and fleecy 
that they seem the skeleton remains of extinct cloudlets, 
and when the distant hills, with their covering of gray frost 
rime, seem, through the clear close atmosphere, as ii 
chiselled in marble. The sun was rising over the town 
through a deep blood-coloured haze — the smoke of a thou- 
sand fires ; and the huge fantastic piles of masonry that 
stretched along the ridge looked dim and spectral through 
the cloud, like the ghosts of an army of giants. I felt half 
a foot taller as I strode on towards the town. It was Edin- 
burgh I was approaching — the scene of so many proud 
associations to a lover of Scotland; and I was going to 
meet, as an early friend, one of the first of Scottish poets. 



30 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

I entered the town. There was a book-stall in a corner of 
the street ; and I turned aside for half a minute to glance 
my eye over the books. 

"Ferguson's Poems!" I exclaimed, taking up a little 
volume. " I was not aware they had appeared in a separate 
form. How do you sell this?" 

" Just like a' the ither booksellers," said the man who 
kept the stall — " that's nane o' the buiks that come down 
in a hurry — just for the marked selling price." I threw 
down the money. 

"Could you tell me anything of the writer?" I said. 
" I have a letter for him from America." 

" Oh, that '11 be frae his brother Henry, I '11 wad — a clever 
chield too, but ower fond o' the drap drink, maybe, like 
Rob himsel\ Baith o' them fine humane chields though, 
without a grain o' pride. Rob takes a stan' wi' me some- 
times o' half an hour at a time, an' we clatter ower the 
buiks ; an', if I 'm no mistaken, yon 's him just yonder — the 
thin, pale slip o' a lad wi' the broad brow. Ay, an' he 's 
just comin' this way." 

" Anything new to-day, Thomas ? " said the young man, 
coming up to the stall. " I want a cheap second-hand copy 
of Ramsay's ' Evergreen, 5 and, like a good man as you are, 
you must just try and find it for me." 

Though considerably altered — for he was taller and thin- 
ner than when at college, and his complexion had assumed 
a deep sallow hue — I recognised him at once, and presented 
him with the letter. 

"Ah, from brother Henry," he said, breaking it open, 
and glancing his eye over the contents. " What! old college 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 31 

chum, Mr Lindsay ! " he exclaimed, turning to me. " Yes, 
sure enough ; how happy I am we should have met ! Come 
this way ; — let us get out of the streets." 

We passed hurriedly through the Canongate and along 
the front of Holyrood House, and were soon in the King's 
Park, v^hich seemed this morning as if left to ourselves. 

" Dear me, and this is you yourself! — and we have again 
met, Mr Lindsay \" said Ferguson : " I thought we were 
never to meet more. Nothing, for a long time, has made 
me half so glad. And so you have been a sailor for the 
last four years. Do let us sit down here in the warm 
sunshine, beside St Anthony's Well, and tell me all your 
story, and how you happened to meet with brother Henry. " 

We sat down, and I briefly related, at his bidding, all 
that had befallen me since we had parted at St Andrews, 
and how I was still a common sailor; but, in the main, 
perhaps, not less happy than many who commanded a 
fleet. 

" Ah, you have been a fortunate fellow," he said ; " you 
have seen much and enjoyed much; and I have been 
rusting in unhappiness at home. Would that I had gone 
to sea along with you !" 

" Nay, now, that won't do," I replied. H But you are 
merely taking Bacon's method of blunting the edge of 
envy. You have scarcely yet attained the years of mature 
manhood, and yet your name has gone abroad over the 
whole length and breadth of the land, and over many 
other lands besides. I have cried over your poems three 
thousand miles away, and felt all the prouder of my 
country for the sake of my friend. And yet you would 



32 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

fain persuade me that you wish the charm reversed, and 
that you were just such an obscure salt-water man as 
myself!" 

" You remember," said my companion, " the story of 
the half-man, half-marble prince of the Arabian tale. One 
part was a living creature, one part a stone ; but the parts 
were incorporated, and the mixture was misery. I am just 
such a poor unhappy creature as the enchanted prince of 
the story." 

" You surprise and distress me," I rejoined. " Have 
you not accomplished all you so fondly purposed, — realised 
even your warmest wishes? And this, too, in early life. 
Your most sanguine hopes pointed but to a name, which 
you yourself perhaps was never to hear, but which was to 
dwell on men's tongues when the grave had closed over 
you. And now the name is gained, and you live to enjoy 
it. I see the living part of your lot, and it seems instinct 
with happiness ; but in what does the dead, the stony part, 
consist?" 

He shook his head, and looked up mournfully in my 
face : there was a pause of a few seconds. " You, Mr 
Lindsay," he at length replied, — "you, who are of an 
equable, steady temperament, can know little from ex- 
perience of the unhappiness of the man who lives only 
in extremes, —who is either madly gay or miserably de- 
pressed. Try and realise the feelings of one whose mind 
is like a broken harp, — all the medium tones gone, and 
only the higher and lower left ; of one, too, whose circum- 
stances seem of a piece with his mind, who can enjoy 
the exercise of his better powers, and yet can only live by 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 33 

the monotonous drudgery of copying page after page in 
a clerk's office ; of one who is continually either groping 
his way amid a chill melancholy fog of nervous depression, 
or carried headlong by a wild gaiety to all which his better 
judgment would instruct him to avoid; of one who, when 
he indulges most in the pride of superior intellect, cannot 
away with the thought that that intellect is on the eve of 
breaking up, and that he must yet rate infinitely lower in 
the scale of rationality than any of the nameless thousands 
who carry on the ordinary concerns of life around him." 

I was grieved and astonished, and knew not what to 
answer. " You are in a gloomy mood to-day," I at length 
said; — "you are immersed in one of the fogs you describe; 
and all the surrounding objects take a tinge of darkness 
from the medium through which you survey them. Come, 
now, you must make an exertion, and shake off your 
melancholy. I have told you all my story as I best could, 
and you must tell me all yours in return." 

"Well," he replied, "I shall, though it mayn't be the 
best way in the world of dissipating my melancholy. I 
think I must have told you, when at college, that I had a 
maternal uncle of considerable wealth, and, as the world 
goes, respectability, who resided in Aberdeenshire. He 
was placed on what one may term the table-land of society; 
and my poor mother, whose recollections of him were 
limited to a period when there is warmth in the feelings 
of the most ordinary minds, had hoped that he would 
willingly exert his influence in my behalf. Much, doubt- 
less, depends on one's setting out in life; and it would 
have been something to have been enabled to step into 



34 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

it from a level like that occupied by my relative. I paid 
him a visit shortly after leaving college, and met with 
apparent kindness. But I can see beyond the surface, 
Mr Lindsay, and I soon saw that my uncle was entirely 
a different man from the brother whom my mother re- 
membered. He had risen, by a course of slow industry, 
from comparative poverty, and his feelings had worn out 
in the process. The character was case-hardened all over ; 
and the polish it bore — for I have rarely met a smoother 
man — seemed no improvement. He was, in brief, one 
of the class content to dwell for ever in mere decencies, 
with consciences made up of the conventional moralities, 
who think by precedent, bow to public opinion as their 
god, and estimate merit by its weight in guineas." 
" And so your visit," I said, " was a very brief one ?" 
" You distress me," he replied ; — " it should have been 
so ; but it was not. But what could I do ? Ever since my 
father's death I had been taught to consider this man as 
my natural guardian, and I was now unwilling to part with 
my last hope. But this is not all. Under much apparent 
activity, my friend, there is a substratum of apathetical in- 
dolence in my disposition : I move rapidly when in motion ; 
but when at rest, there is a dull inertness in the character, 
which the will, when unassisted by passion, is too feeble to 
overcome. Poor, weak creature that I am ! I had sitten 
down by my uncle's fireside, and felt unwilling to rise. 
Pity me, my friend, — I deserve your pity ; but oh ! do 
not despise me." 

" Forgive me, Mr Ferguson," I said ; " I have given you 
pain, but surely most unwittingly. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 35 

" I am ever a fool," he continued. " But my story lags ; 
and, surely, there is little in it on which it were pleasure to 
dwell. I sat at this man's table for six months, and saw, 
day^after day, his manner towards me becoming more con- 
strained, and his politeness more cold; and yet I stayed on, 
till at last my clothes were worn threadbare, and he began 
to feel that the shabbiness of the nephew affected the re- 
spectability of the uncle. His friend the soap-boiler, and 
his friend the oil-merchant, and his friend the manager of 
the hemp manufactory, with their wives and daughters, 
— all people of high standing in the world, — occasionally 
honoured his table with their presence ; and how could he 
be other than ashamed of mine ? It vexes me that I can- 
not even yet be cool on the subject, — it vexes me that a 
creature so sordid should have so much power to move 
me; but I cannot, I cannot master my feelings. He — 
he told me — and with whom should the blame rest, but 
with the weak, spiritless thing who lingered on in mean, 
bitter dependence, to hear what he had to tell ? — he told 
me that all his friends were respectable, and that my ap- 
pearance was no longer that of a person whom he could 
wish to see at his table, or introduce to any one as his 
nephew. And I had stayed to hear all this ! 

"I can hardly tell you how I got home. I travelled, 
stage after stage, along the rough dusty roads, with a weak 
and feverish body, and almost despairing mind. On meeting 
with my mother, I could have laid my head on her bosom, 
and cried like a child. I took to my bed in a high fever, 
and trusted that all my troubles were soon to terminate ; 
but when the die was cast, it turned up life. I resumed 



36 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

my old miserable employments, — for what could I else? — 
and, that I might be less unhappy in the prosecution of 
them, my old amusements too. I copied during the day 
in a clerk's office that I might live, and wrote during the 
night that I might be known. And I have in part, perhaps, 
attained my object. I have pursued and caught hold of 
the shadow on which my heart had been so long set ; and 
if it prove empty, and untangible, and unsatisfactory, like 
every other shadow, the blame surely must rest with the 
pursuer, — not with the thing pursued. I weary you, Mr 
Lindsay ; but one word more. There are hours when the 
mind, weakened by exertion, or by the teasing monotony 
of an employment which tasks without exercising it, can 
no longer exert its powers, and when, feeling that sociality 
is a law of our nature, we seek the society of our fellow- 
men. With a creature so much the sport of impulse as I 
am, it is of these hours of weakness that conscience takes 
most note. God help me ! I have been told that life is 
short ; but it stretches on, and on, and on before me ; and 
I know not how it is to be passed through." 

My spirits had so sunk during this singular conversation, 
that I had no heart to reply. 

" You are silent, Mr Lindsay/' said the poet ; " I have 
made you as melancholy as myself; but look around you, 
and say if ever you have seen a lovelier spot. See how 
richly the yellow sunshine slants along the green sides of 
Arthur's Seat ; and how the thin blue smoke, that has come 
floating from the town, fills the bottom of yonder grassy 
dell, as if it were a little lake ! Mark, too; how boldly the 
cliffs stand out along its sides, each with its little patch 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 37 

of shadow. And here, beside us, is St Anthony's Well, so 
famous in song, coming gushing out to the sunshine, and 
then gliding away through the grass like a snake. Had 
the Deity purposed that man should be miserable, He 
would surely never have placed him in so fair a world. 
Perhaps much of our unhappiness originates in our mis- 
taking our proper scope, and thus setting out from the first 
with a false aim." 

" Unquestionably," I replied, " there is no man who has 
not some part to perform; and if it be a great and un- 
common part, and the powers which fit him for it propor- 
tionably great and uncommon, nature would be in error 
could he slight it with impunity. See, there is a wild bee 
bending the flower beside you. Even that little creature has 
a capacity of happiness and misery: it derives its sense 
of pleasure from whatever runs in the line of its instincts, — ■ 
its experience of unhappiness, from whatever thwarts and 
opposes them ; and can it be supposed that so wise a law 
should regulate the instincts of only inferior creatures? 
No, my friend ; it is surely a law of our nature also." 

"And have you not something else to infer?" said the 
poet. 

"Yes," I replied; "that you are occupied differently from 
what the scope and constitution of your mind demand, — 
differently both in your hours of employment and of re- 
laxation. But do take heart; you will yet find your pro- 
per place, and all shall be well." 

" Alas ! no, my friend/' said he, rising from the sward. 
" I could once entertain such a hope ; but I cannot now. 
My mind is no longer what it was to me in my happier days, 



38 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

— a sort of terra incognita, without bounds or limits. I can 
see over and beyond it, and have fallen from all my hopes 
regarding it. It is not so much the gloom of present cir- 
cumstances that disheartens me, as a depressing knowledge 
of myself, — an abiding conviction that I am a weak dreamer, 
unfitted for every occupation of life, and not less so for the 
greater employments of literature than for any of the others. 
I feel that I am a little man and a little poet, with barely 
vigour enough to make one half-effort at a time, but wholly 
devoid of the sustaining will, — that highest faculty of the 
highest order of minds, — which can direct a thousand 
vigorous efforts to the accomplishment of one important 
object. Would that I could exchange my half-celebrity 
— and it can never be other than a half-celebrity — for a 
temper as equable and a fortitude as unshrinking as yours ! 
But I weary you with my complaints : I am a very coward ; 
and you will deem me as selfish as I am weak." 

We parted. The poet, sadly and unwillingly, went to 
copy deeds in the office of the commissary-clerk ; and I, 
almost reconciled to obscurity and hard labour, to assist in 
unlading a Baltic trader in the harbour of Leith. 



CHAPTER VI. 

"Speech without aim, and without end employ." — CRABBE. 

After the lapse ot nine months, I again returned to Edin- 
burgh. During that period I had been so shut out from 
literature and the world, that I had heard nothing of my 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 39 

friend the poet ; and it was with a beating heart I left the 
vessel, on my first leisure evening, to pay him a visit. It 
was about the middle of July. The day had been close and 
sultry, and the heavens overcharged with gray ponderous 
clouds; and as I passed hurriedly along the walk which leads 
from Leith to Edinburgh, I could hear the newly-awakened 
thunder, bellowing far in the south, peal after peal, like the 
artillery of two hostile armies. I reached the door of the 
poet's humble domicile, and had raised my hand to the 
knocker, when I heard some one singing from within, 
in a voice by far the most touchingly mournful I had ever 
listened to. The tones struck on my heart; and a frightful 
suspicion crossed my mind, as I set down the knocker, 
that the singer was no other than my friend. But in what 
wretched circumstances! — what fearful state of mind! I 
shuddered as I listened, and heard the strain waxing louder 
and yet more mournful, and could distinguish that the 
words were those of a simple old ballad — 

" O Marti' mas wind, when wilt thou blaw, 
An' shake the green leaves aff the tree ? 
O gentle death, when wilt thou come, 
An' tak a life that wearies me?" 

I could listen no longer, but raised the latch and went 
in. The evening was gloomy, and the apartment ill-lighted; 
but I could see the singer, a spectral-looking figure, sitting 
on a bed in the corner, with the bed-clothes wrapped round 
his shoulders, and a napkin, deeply stained with blood, on 
his head. An elderly female, who stood beside him, was 
striving to soothe him, and busied from time to time in 
adjusting the clothes, which were ever and anon falling off 



ao TALES AND SKETCHES. 

as he nodded his head in time to the music. A young girl 
of great beauty sat weeping at the bed-foot. 

" Oh, dearest Robert," said the woman, " you will de- 
stroy your poor head; and Margaret, your sister, whom 
you used to love so much, will break her heart. Do 
lie down, dearest, and take a little rest. Your head is 
fearfully gashed ; and if the bandages loose a second time, 
you will bleed to death. Do, dearest Robert, for your 
poor old mother, to whom you were always so kind and 
dutiful a son till now, — for your poor old mother's sake, 
do lie down." 

The song ceased for a moment, and the tears came 

bursting from my eyes, as the tune changed, and he again 

sang — 

" O mither dear, make ye my bed, 
For my heart it 's flichterin' sair ; 
An' oh ! gin I Ve vex'd ye, mither dear, 

I '11 never vex ye mair. 
I 've stay'd ar'out the lang dark nicht, 

I* the sleet an' the plashy rain ; 

But mither dear, make ye my bed, 

An' I '11 ne'er gang out again." 

" Dearest, dearest Robert," continued the poor, heart- 
broken woman, " do lie down, — for your poor old mother's 
sake, do lie down." 

" No, no," he exclaimed in a hurried voice, " not just 
now, mother, not just now. Here is my friend, Mr Lindsay, 
come to see me, — my true friend, Mr Lindsay the sailor, 
who has sailed all round and round the world ; and I have 
much, much to ask him. A chair, Margaret, for Mr Lind- 
say. I must be a preacher like John Knox, you know, — 
like the great John Knox, the reformer of a nation, — and 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 41 

Mr Lindsay knows all about him. A chair, Margaret, for 
Mr Lindsay." 

I am not ashamed to say, it was with tears, and in a 
voice faltering with emotion, that I apologised to the poor 
woman for my intrusion at such a time. Were it otherwise, 
I might well conclude my heart grown hard as a piece of 
the nether millstone. 

" I had known Robert at college," I said, — " had loved 
and respected him ; and had now come to pay him a visit, 
after an absence of several months, wholly unprepared for 
finding him in his present condition." And it would seem 
that my tears pled for me, and proved to the poor afflicted 
woman and her daughter by far the most efficient part of 
my apology. 

" All my friends have left me now, Mr Lindsay," said the 
unfortunate poet, — " they have all left me now ; they love 
this present world. We were all going down, down, down; 
there was the roll of a river behind us ; it came bursting 
over the high rocks, roaring, rolling, foaming, down upon 
us; and, though the fog was thick and dark below, — far 
below, in the place to which we were going, — I could see 
the red fire shining through, — the red, hot, unquenchable 
fire ; and we were all going down, down, down. Mother, 
mother, tell Mr Lindsay I am going to be put on my trials 
to-morrow. Careless creature that I am : life is short, and I 
have lost much time; but I am going to be put on my trials 
to-morrow, and shall come forth a preacher of the Word." 

The thunder, which had hitherto been muttering at a 
distance, — each peal, however, nearer and louder than the 
preceding one, — now began to roll overhead, and the light- 



42 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

ning, as it passed the window, to illumine every object 
within. The hapless poet stretched out his thin, wasted 
arm, as if addressing a congregation from the pulpit. 

" There were the flashings of lightning," he said, " and 
the roll of thunder; and the trumpet waxed louder and 
louder. And around the summit of the mountain were the 
foldings of thick clouds, and the shadow fell brown and 
dark over the wide expanse of the desert. And the wild 
beasts lay trembling in their dens. But, lo ! where the sun 
breaks through the opening of the cloud, there is the glitter 
of tents, — the glitter of ten thousand tents, — that rise over 
the sandy waste, thick as waves of the sea. And there, 
there is the voice of the dance, and of the revel, and the 
winding of horns, and the clash of cymbals. Oh, sit 
nearer me, dearest mother, for the room is growing dark, 
dark ; and oh, my poor head ! 

" ' The lady sat on the castle wa', 

Look'd owre baith dale and down, 
And then she spied Gil-Morice head 
Come steering through the town/ 

Do, dearest mother, put your cool hand on my brow, and 
do hold it fa.st ere it part. How fearfully, — oh, how fear- 
fully it aches ! — and oh, how it thunders !" He sunk 
backward on the pillow, apparently exhausted. "Gone, 
gone, gone," he muttered, — " my mind gone for ever. But 
God's will be done." 

I rose to leave the room ; for I could restrain my feelings 
no longer. 

"Stay, Mr Lindsay," said the poet, in a feeble voice; 
" I hear the rain dashing on the pavement; you must not 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 43 

go till it abates. Would that you could pray beside me ! 
But no; you are not like the dissolute companions who 
have now all left me, but you are not yet fitted for that ; 
and, alas ! I cannot pray for myself. Mother, mother, see 
that there be prayers at my lykewake ; for — 

*' ' Her lykewake, it was piously spent 
In social prayer and praise, 
Perform'd by judicious men, 
Who stricken were in days. 

" ' And many a heavy, heavy heart, 
Was in that mournful place ; 
And many a weary, weary thought, 
On her who slept in peace.' 

They will come all to my lykewake, mother^ won't they ? 
Yes, all, though they have left me now. Yes, and they will 
come far to see my grave. I was poor, very poor, you 
know, and they looked down upon me ; and I was no son 
or cousin of theirs, and so they could do nothing for me. 
Oh, but they might have looked less coldly ! But they will 
all come to my grave, mother — they will come all to my 
grave ; and they will say, c Would he were living now, to 
know how kind we are P But they will look as coldly as 
ever on the living poet beside them — yes, till they have 
broken his heart ; and then they will go to his grave too. 
Oh, dearest mother, do lay your cool hand on my brow." 

He lay silent and exhausted, and in a few minutes I 
could hope, from the hardness of his breathing, that he had 
fallen asleep. 

" How long," I inquired of his sister, in a low whisper, 
" has Mr Ferguson been so unwell, and what has injured 
his head?" 



44 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

"Alas !" said the girl, u my brother has been unsettled in 
mind for nearly the last six months. We first knew it one 
evening on his coming home from the country, where he 
had been for a few days with a friend. He burnt a large 
heap of papers that he had been employed on for weeks 
before, — songs and poems that, his friends say, were the 
finest things he ever wrote ; but he burnt them all, for he 
was going to be a preacher of the Word, he said, and it did 
not become a preacher of the Word to be a writer of light 
rhymes. And oh, sir ! his mind has been carried ever 
since ; but he has been always gentle and affectionate, and 
his sole delight has lain in reading the Bible. Good Dr 
Erskine, of the Greyfriars', often comes to our house, and 
sits with him for hours together : for there are times when 
his mind seems stronger than ever ; and he says wonderful 
things, that seem to hover, the minister says, between the 
extravagance natural to his present sad condition and the 
higher flights of a philosophic genius. And we had hoped 
that he was getting better ; but oh, sir ! our hopes have 
had a sad ending. He went out, a few evenings ago, to call 
on an old acquaintance, and, in descending a stair, missed 
footing, and fell to the bottom; and his head has been 
fearfully injured by the stones. He has been just as you 
have seen him ever since ; and oh ! I much fear he cannot 
now recover. Alas, my poor brother ! — never, never was 
there a more affectionate heart !" 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 45 



CHAPTER VII. 

"A lowly muse ! 
She sings of reptiles yet in song unknown.'* 

I returned to the vessel with a heavy heart ; and it was 
nearly three months from this time ere I again set foot in 
Edinburgh. Alas for my unfortunate friend ! He was now 
an inmate of the asylum, and on the verge of dissolution. 
I was thrown by accident, shortly after my arrival at this 
time, into the company of one of his boon companions. I 
had gone into a tavern with a brother sailor — a shrewd, 
honest skipper, from the north country — and finding the 
place occupied by half a dozen young fellows, who were 
growing noisy over their liquor, I would have immediately 
gone out again, had I not caught, in the passing, a few 
words regarding my friend. And so, drawing to a side- 
table, I sat down. 

" Believe me," said one of the topers, a dissolute-looking 
young man, "it's all over with Bob Ferguson — all over; 
and I knew it from the moment he grew religious. Had 
old Brown tried to convert me, I would have broken his 
face." 

"What Brown?" inquired one of his companions. 

"Is that all you know?" rejoined the other. "Why, 
John Brown of Haddington, the Seceder. Bob was at Had- 
dington last year at the election, and one morning, when in 
the horrors, after holding a rum night of it, who should he 



46 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

meet in the churchyard but old John Brown. He writes, 
you know, a big book on the Bible. Well, he lectured Bob 
at a pretty rate about election and the call, I suppose ; and 
the poor fellow has been mad ever since. Your health, 
Jamie. For my own part, I 'm a freewill man, and detest 
all cant and humbug/' 

" And what has come of Ferguson now?" asked one of 
the others. 

" Oh, mad, sir, mad," rejoined the toper, — " reading the 
Bible all day, and cooped up in the asylum yonder. 'Twas 
I who brought him to it. But, lads, the glass has been 
standing for the last half hour. 'Twas I and Jack Robinson 
who brought him to it, as I say. He was getting wild, and 
so we got a sedan for him, and trumped up a story of an 
invitation for tea from a lady, and he came with us as 
quietly as a lamb. But if you could have heard the shriek 
he gave when the chair stopped, and he saw where we had 
brought him ! I never heard anything half so horrible — it 
rung in my ears for a week after ; and then, how the mad 
people in the upper rooms howled and gibbered in reply, 
till the very roof echoed ! People say he is getting better ; 
but when I last saw him, he was as religious as ever, and 
spoke so much about heaven, that it was uncomfortable 
to hear him. Great loss to his friends, after all the expense 
they have been at with his education." 

" You seem to have been intimate with Mr Ferguson," I 
said. 

" Oh, intimate with Bob ?" he rejoined ; " we were hand 
and glove, man. I have sat with him in Lucky Middle- 
mass's almost every evening for two ^ears ; and I have 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 47 

given him hints for some of the best things in his book. 
'Twas I who tumbled down the cage in the Meadows, and 
began breaking the lamps. 

" ' Ye who oft finish care in Lethe's cup,— 

Who love to swear and roar, and keep it up,— 
List to a brother's voice, whose sole delight 
Is sleep all day, and riot all the night.' 

There 's spirit for you ! But Bob was never sound at bot- 
tom, and I have told him so. ' Bob,' I have said, — ' Bob, 
you 're but a hypocrite after all, man — without half the 
spunk you pretend to. Why don't you take a pattern by 
me, who fear nothing, and believe only the agreeable?' 
But, poor fellow, he had weak nerves, and a church-going 
propensity that did him no good ; and you see the effects. 
'Twas all nonsense, Tom, of his throwing the squib into the 
Glassite meeting-house. Between you and I, that was a 
cut far beyond him in his best days, poet as he was. 
'Twas I who did it, man ; and never was there a cleaner 
row in Auld Reekie." 

" Heartless, contemptible puppy !" said my comrade the 
sailor, as we left the room. " Your poor friend must be ill 
indeed if he be but half as insane as his quondam com- 
panion. But he cannot : there is no madness like that of 
the heart. What could have induced a man of genius to 
associate with a thing so thoroughly despicable ?" 

" The same misery, Miller," I said, " that brings a man 
acquainted with strange bed-fellows" 



48 TALES AND SKETCHES. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

" O thou, my elder brother in misfortune, 
By far my elder brother in the muses, 
With tears I pity thy unhappy fate ! " — Burns. 

The asylum in which my unfortunate friend was confined 
— at this time the only one in Edinburgh — was situated in 
an angle of the city wall. It was a dismal-looking mansion, 
shut in on every side by the neighbouring houses, from the 
view of the surrounding country, and so effectually covered 
up from the nearer street by a large building in front, that 
it seemed possible enough to pass a life-time in Edinburgh 
without coming to the knowledge of its existence. I shud- 
dered as I looked up to its blackened walls, thinly sprinkled 
with miserable-looking windows, barred with iron; and 
thought of it as a sort of burial-place of dead minds. But 
it was a Golgotha which, with more than the horrors of the 
grave, had neither its rest nor its silence. I was startled 
as I entered the cell of the hapless poet, by a shout of 
laughter from a neighbouring room, which was answered 
from a dark recess behind me by a fearfully-prolonged 
shriek, and the clanking of chains. The mother and sister 
of Ferguson were sitting beside his pallet, on a sort of 
stone-settle, which stood out from the wall ; and the poet 
himself — weak, and exhausted, and worn to a shadow, but 
apparently in his right mind — lay extended on the straw. 
He made an attempt to rise as I entered ; but the effort 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 49 

was above his strength, and, again lying down, he extended 
his hand. 

" This is kind, Mr Lindsay, ' he said ; " it is ill for me 
to be alone in these days ; and yet I have few visitors, save 
my poor old mother and Margaret. But who cares for the 
unhappy?" 

I sat down on the settle beside him, still retaining his 
hand. " I have been at sea, and in foreign countries," I 
said, " since I last saw you, Mr Ferguson, and it was 
only this morning I returned ; but, believe me, there are 
many, many of your countrymen who sympathise sin- 
cerely in your affliction, and take a warm interest in your 
recovery." 

He sighed deeply. " Ah," he replied, " I know too well 
the nature of that sympathy. You never find it at the bed- 
side of the sufferer : it evaporates in a few barren expres- 
sions of idle pity ; and yet, after all, it is but a paying the 
poet in kind. He calls so often on the world to sympathise 
over fictitious misfortune, that the feeling wears out, and 
becomes a mere mood of the imagination; and with this 
light attenuated pity, of his own w r eaving, it regards his 
own real sorrows. Dearest mother, the evening is damp 
and chill. Do gather the bed-clothes around me, and sit 
on my feet : they are so very cold, and so dead, that they 
cannot be colder a week hence." 

"Oh, Robert, why do you speak so?" said the poor 
woman, as she gathered the clothes around him, and sat on 
his feet. " You know you are coming home to-morrow." 

"To-morrow!" he said: "if I see to-morrow, I shall 
have completed my twenty- fourth year, — a small part, 



So TALES AND SKETCHES. 

surely, of the threescore and ten; but what matters it 
when 'tis past?" 

" You were ever, my friend, of a melancholy tempera- 
ment," I said, "and too little disposed to hope. In- 
dulge in brighter views of the future, and all shall yet be 
well/' 

" I can now hope that it shall," he said. " Yes ; all shall 
be well with me, — and that very soon. But oh, how this 
nature of ours shrinks from dissolution ! — yes, and all the 
lower natures too. You remember, mother, the poor star- 
ling that was killed in the room beside us ? Oh, how it 
struggled with its ruthless enemy, and filled the whole place 
with its shrieks of terror and agony ! And yet, poor little 
thing, it had been true, all life long, to the laws of its 
nature, and had no sins to account for, and no Judge to 
meet. There is a shrinking of heart as I look before me ; 
and yet I can hope that all shall yet be well with me, and 
that very soon. Would that I had been wise in time ! 
Would that I had thought more and earlier of the things 
which pertain to my eternal peace ! — more of a living soul, 
and less of a dying name ! But oh ! 'tis a glorious pro- 
vision, through which a way of return is opened up, even at 
the eleventh hour." 

We sat round him in silence. An indescribable feeling 
of awe pervaded my whole mind ; and his sister was 
affected to tears. 

" Margaret," he said in feeble voice, — " Margaret, you 
will find my Bible in yonder little recess ; 'tis all I have to 
leave you ; but keep it, dearest sister, and use it, and in 
times of sorrow and suffering, that come to all, you will 



RECOLLECTIONS OF FERG US ON. 5 1 

know how to prize the legacy of your poor brother. Many, 
many books do well enough for life ; but there is only one 
of any value when we come to die. 

" You have been a voyager of late, Mr Lindsay," he con- 
tinued, " and I have been a voyager too. I have been 
journeying in darkness and discomfort, amid strange un- 
earthly shapes of dread and horror, with no reason to direct, 
and no will to govern. Oh, the unspeakable unhappiness 
of these wanderings ! — these dreams of suspicion, and fear, 
and hatred, in which shadow and substance, the true and 
the false, were so wrought up and mingled together, that 
they formed but one fantastic and miserable whole. And 
oh, the unutterable horror of every momentary return to a 
recollection of what I had been once, and a sense of what 
I had become ! Oh, when I awoke amid the terrors of the 
night, — when I turned me on the rustling straw, and heard 
the wild wail, and yet wilder laugh, — when I heard, and 
shuddered, and then felt the demon in all his might coming 
over me, till I laughed and wailed with the others, — oh, the 
misery ! the utter misery ! But 'tis over, my friend, — 'tis 
all over. A few, few tedious days, — a few, few weary 
nights, — and all my sufferings shall be over." 

I had covered my face with my hands, but the tears came 
bursting through my fingers. The mother and sister of the 
poet sobbed aloud. 

" Why sorrow for me, sirs ? " he said ; " why grieve for 
me ? I am well, quite well, and want for nothing, But 
'tis cold — oh, 'tis very cold, and the blood seems freezing 
at my heart. Ah, but there is neither pain nor cold where 
I am going, and I trust it shall be well with my soul ! 



52 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

Dearest, dearest mother, I always told you it would come 
to this at last." 

The keeper had entered, to intimate to us that the hour 
for locking up the cells was already past, and we now rose 
to leave the place. I stretched out my hand to my unfor- 
tunate friend. He took it in silence, and his thin, attenu- 
ated fingers felt cold within my grasp, like those of a corpse. 
His mother stooped down to embrace him. 

" Oh, do not go yet, mother," he said ; " do not go yet 
— do not leave me. But it must be so, and I only distress 
you. Pray for me, dearest mother, and oh, forgive me. 
I have been a grief and a burden to you all life long; 
but I ever loved you, mother; and oh, you have been kind, 
kind, and forgiving, and now your task is over. May God 
bless and reward you ! Margaret, dearest Margaret, fare- 
well !" 

We parted, and, as it proved, for ever. Robert Ferguson 
expired during the night ; and when the keeper entered the 
cell next morning, to prepare him for quitting the asylum, 
all that remained of this most hapless of the children of 
genius was a pallid and wasted corpse, that lay stiffening on 
the straw. I am now a very old man, and the feelings wear 
out; but I find that my heart is even yet susceptible of 
emotion, and that the source of tears is not yet dried up. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 



CHAPTER I. 

1 ' Wear we not graven on our hearts 
The name of Robert Burns?" — American Poet. 

The degrees shorten as we proceed from the higher to the 
lower latitudes : the years seem to shorten in a much greater 
ratio as we pass onward through life. We are almost dis- 
posed to question w r hether the brief period of storms and 
foul weather that floats over us with such dream-like rapi- 
dity, and the transient season of flowers and sunshine that 
seems almost too short for enjoyment, be at all identical 
with the long summers, and still longer winters, of our 
boyhood, when day after day, and week after week, stretched 
away in dim perspective, till lost in the obscurity of an 
almost inconceivable distance. Young as I was, I had 
already passed the period of life when we wonder how it is 
that the years should be described as short and fleeting; 
and it seemed as if I had stood but yesterday beside the 
death-bed of the unfortunate Ferguson, though the flowers 
of four summers and the snows of four winters had now 
been shed over his grave. 



54 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

My prospects in life had begun to brighten. I served in 
the capacity of mate in a large West India trader, the 
master of which, an elderly man of considerable wealth, 
was on the eve of quitting the sea, and the owners had 
already determined that I should succeed him in the charge. 
But fate had ordered it otherwise. Our seas were infested 
at this period by American privateers — prime sailers and 
strongly armed ; and, when homeward bound from Jamaica 
with a valuable cargo, we were attacked and captured, when 
within a day's sailing of Ireland, by one of the most formid- 
able of the class. Vain as resistance might have been 
deemed — for the force of the American was altogether over- 
powering — and though our master, poor old man! and three 
of the crew, had fallen by the first broadside, we had yet 
stood stiffly by our guns, and were only overmastered when, 
after falling foul of the enemy, we were boarded by a party 
of thrice our strength and number. The Americans, irri- 
tated by our resistance, proved on this occasion no generous 
enemies : we were stripped and heavily ironed, and, two 
days after, were set ashore on the wild coast of Connaught, 
without a single change of dress, or a single sixpence to bear 
us by the way. 

I was sitting, on the following night, beside the turf-fire 
of a hospitable Irish peasant, when a seafaring man, whom 
I had sailed with about two years before, entered the cabin. 
The meeting was equally unexpected on either side. My 
acquaintance was the master of a smuggling lugger then on 
the coast, and on acquainting him with the details of my 
disaster, and the state of destitution to which it had reduced 
me, he kindly proposed that I should accompany him on his 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 55 

voyage to the west coast of Scotland, for which he was then 
on the eve of sailing. " You will run some little risk," he 
said, " as the companion of a man who has now been thrice 
outlawed for firing on his Majesty's flag; but I know your 
proud heart will prefer the danger of bad company, at its 
worst, to the alternative of begging your way home." He 
judged rightly. Before daybreak we had lost sight of land; 
and in four days more, we could discern the precipitous 
shores of Carrick stretching in a dark line along the horizon, 
and the hills of the interior rising thin and blue behind, like 
a volume of clouds. A considerable part of our cargo, 
which consisted mostly of tea and spirits, was consigned to 
an Ayr trader, who had several agents in the remote parish 
of Kirkoswald, which at this period afforded more facilities 
for carrying on the contraband trade than any other on the 
western coast of Scotland; and in a rocky bay of the parish 
we proposed unlading on the following night. It was 
necessary, however, that the several agents, who were yet 
ignorant of our arrival, should be prepared to meet with us; 
and on volunteering my service for the purpose, I was 
landed near the ruins of the ancient castle of Turnberry, 
once the seat of Robert the Bruce. 

I had accomplished my object. It was evening, and a 
party of countrymen were sauntering among the cliffs, wait- 
ing for nightfall and the appearance of the lugger. There 
are splendid caverns on the coast of Kirkoswald ; and, to 
while away the time, I had descended to the shore by a 
broken and precipitous path, with a view of exploring what 
are termed the Caves of Colzean, by far the finest in this 
part of Scotland. The evening was of great beauty : the sea 



56 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

spread out from the cliffs to the far horizon, like the sea of 
gold and crystal described by the prophet ; and its warm 
orange hues so harmonised with those of the sky, that, pass- 
ing over the dimly-defined line of demarcation, the whole 
upper and nether expanse seemed but one glorious firma- 
ment, with the dark Ailsa, like a thunder-cloud, sleeping in 
the midst. The sun was hastening to his setting, and threw 
his strong red light on the wall of rock which, loftier and 
more imposing than the walls of even the mighty Babylon^ 
stretched onward along the beach, headland after headland, 
till the last sank abruptly in the far distance, and only the 
wide ocean stretched beyond. I passed along the insulated 
piles of cliff that rise thick along the bases of the precipices 
— now in sunshine, now in shadow — till I reached the open- 
ing of one of the largest caves. The roof rose more than 
fifty feet over my head ; a broad stream of light, that seemed 
redder and more fiery from the surrounding gloom, slanted 
inwards ; and, as I paused in the opening, my shadow, length- 
ened and dark, fell athwart the floor — a slim and narrow bar 
of black — till lost in the gloom of the inner recess. There 
was a wild and uncommon beauty in the scene, that power- 
fully affected the imagination ; and I stood admiring it, in 
that delicious dreamy mood in which one can forget all but 
the present enjoyment, when I was roused to a recollection 
of the business of the evening by the sound of a footfall 
echoing from within. It seemed approaching by a sort of 
cross passage in the rock ; and in a moment after, a young 
man — one of the country people whom I had left among the 
cliffs above — stood before me. He wore a broad Lowland 
bonnet, and his plain homely suit of coarse russet seemed to 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 57 

bespeak him a peasant of perhaps the poorest class ; but as 
he emerged from the gloom, and the red light fell full on his 
countenance, I saw an indescribable something in the expres- 
sion, that in an instant awakened my curiosity. He was 
rather above the middle size, of a frame the most muscular 
and compact I have almost ever seen ; and there was a 
blended mixture of elasticity and firmness in his tread, that, 
to one accustomed, as I had been, to estimate the physical 
capabilities of men, gave evidence of a union of immense per- 
sonal strength with great activity. My first idea regarding 
the stranger — and I know not how it should have struck 
me — was that of a very powerful frame, animated by a 
double portion of vitality. The red light shone full on his 
face, and gave a ruddy tinge to the complexion, which I 
afterwards found it wanted, for he was naturally of a darker 
hue than common ; but there was no mistaking the expres- 
sion of the large flashing eyes, the features, that seemed so 
thoroughly cast in the mould of thought, and the broad, 
full, perpendicular forehead. Such, at least, was the im- 
pression on my mind, that I addressed him with more of 
the courtesy which my earlier pursuits had rendered familiar 
to me, than of the bluntness of my adopted profession. 
" This sweet evening," I said, " is by far too fine for our 
lugger : I question whether, in these calms, we need expect 
her before midnight. But 'tis well, since wait we must, that 
'tis in a place where the hours may pass so agreeably." 
The stranger good-humouredly acquiesced in the remark ; 
and we sat down together on the dry, water-worn pebbles, 
mixed with fragments of broken shells and minute pieces of 
wreck, that strewed the opening of the cave. 



58 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

" Was there ever a lovelier evening ! " he exclaimed. 
" The waters above the firmament seem all of a piece with 
the waters below. And never, surely, was there a scene of 
wilder beauty. Only look inwards and see how the stream 
of red light seems bounded by the extreme darkness, like a 
river by its banks, and how the reflection of the ripple goes 
waving in golden curls along the roof ! " 

" I have been admiring the scene for the last half-hour," 
I said. " Shakespeare speaks of a music that cannot be 
heard ; and I have not yet seen a place where one might 
better learn to comment on the passage." 

Both the thought and the phrase seemed new to him. 

" A music that cannot be heard ! " he repeated ; and 
then, after a momentary pause, " You allude to the fact," 
he continued, " that sweet music, and forms, such as these, 
of silent beauty and grandeur, awaken in the mind emo- 
tions of nearly the same class. There is something truly 
exquisite in the concert of to-night." 

I muttered a simple assent. 

" See," he continued, " how finely these insulated piles 
of rock, that rise in so many combinations of form along 
the beach, break and diversify the red light ; and how the 
glossy leaves of the ivy glisten in the hollows of the preci- 
pices above ! And then, how the sea spreads away to the 
far horizon, — a glorious pavement of crimson and gold ! 
and how the dark Ailsa rises in the midst, like the little 
cloud seen by the prophet ! The mind seems to enlarge, 
the heart to expand, in the contemplation of so much of 
beauty and grandeur. The soul asserts its due supremacy. 
And oh, 'tis surely well that we can escape from those little 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 59 

cares of life which fetter down our thoughts, our hopes, our 
wishes, to the wants and the enjoyments of our animal 
existence ; and that, amid the grand and the sublime of 
nature, we may learn from the spirit within us that we are 
better than the beasts that perish ! " 

I looked up to the animated countenance and flashing 
.eyes of my companion, and wondered what sort of a peas- 
ant it was I had met with. " Wild and beautiful as the 
scene is," I said, "you will find, even among those who 
arrogate to themselves the praise of wisdom and learning, 
men who regard such scenes as mere errors of nature. 
Burnet would have told you that a Dutch landscape, without 
hill, rock, or valley, must be the perfection of beauty, seeing 
that Paradise itself could have furnished nothing better." 

"I hold Milton as higher authority on the subject," said 
my companion, " than all the philosophers who ever wrote. 
Beauty in a tame unvaried flat, where a man would know 
his country only by the milestones ! A very Dutch Para- 
dise, truly ! " 

" But would not some of your companions above," I 
asked, " deem the scene as much an error of nature as 
Burnet himself? They could pass over these stubborn 
rocks neither plough nor harrow." 

" True," he replied ; " there is a species of small wisdom 
in the world, that often constitutes the extremest of its 
folly, — a wisdom that would change the entire nature of 
good, had it but the power, by vainly endeavouring to 
render that good universal. It would convert the entire 
earth into one vast corn-field, and then find that it had 
ruined the species by its improvement." 



6o TALES AND SKETCHES. 

" We of Scotland can hardly be ruined in that way for an 
age to come," I said. " But I am not sure that I under- 
stand you. Alter the very nature of good in the attempt 
to render it universal ! How ? " 

" I daresay you have seen a graduated scale," said my 
companion, " exhibiting the various powers of the different 
musical instruments, and observed how some of limited 
scope cross only a few of the divisions, and how others 
stretch nearly from side to side. 'Tis but a poor truism, 
perhaps, to say that similar differences in scope and power 
obtain among men, — that there are minds who could not 
join in the concert of to-night, — who could see neither 
beauty nor grandeur amid these wild cliffs and caverns, or 
in that glorious expanse of sea and sky ; and that, on the 
other hand, there are minds so finely modulated, — minds 
that sweep so broadly across the scale of nature, — that 
there is no object, however minute, no breath of feeling, 
however faint, that does not awaken their sweet vibrations ; 
— the snow-flake falling in the stream, the daisy of the field, 
the conies of the rock, the hyssop of the wall. Now, the 
vast and various frame of nature is adapted, not to the 
lesser, but to the larger mind. It spreads on and around 
us in all its rich and magnificent variety, and finds the full 
portraiture of its Proteus-like beauty in the mirror of genius 
alone. Evident, however, as this may seem, we find a 
sort of levelling principle in the inferior order of minds, 
and which, in fact, constitutes one of their grand charac- 
teristics, — a principle that would fain abridge the scale to 
their own narrow capabilities, — that would cut down the 
vastness of nature to suit the littleness of their own con- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 61 

ceptions and desires, and convert it into one tame, uniform, 
mediocre good, which would be good but to themselves alone, 
and ultimately not even that" 

" I think I can now understand you," I said : " you 
describe a sort of swinish wisdom, that would convert the 
world into one vast stye. For my own part, I have tra- 
velled far enough to know the value of a blue hill, and 
would not willingly lose so much as one of these landmarks 
of our mother land, by which kindly hearts in distant 
countries love to remember it." 

" I daresay we are getting fanciful," rejoined my com- 
panion ; " but certainly, in man's schemes of improvement, 
both physical and moral, there is commonly a littleness, 
and want of adaptation to the general good, that almost 
always defeats his aims. He sees and understands but a 
minute portion ; — it is always some partial good he would 
introduce ; and thus he but destroys the just proportions of 
a nicely regulated system of things, by exaggerating one of 
the parts. I passed, of late, through a richly-cultivated 
district of country, in which the agricultural improver had 
done his utmost. Never were there finer fields, more con- 
venient steadings, crops of richer promise, a better regulated 
system of production. Corn and cattle had mightily im- 
proved j but what had man, the lord of the soil, become ? 
Is not the body better than food, and life than raiment ? If 
that decline, for which all other things exist, it surely 
matters little that all these other things prosper. And here, 
though the corn, the cattle, the fields, the steadings, had 
improved, man had sunk. There were but two classes in 
the district; a few cold-hearted speculators, who united what 



62 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

is worst in the character of the landed proprietor and the 
merchant ; — these were young gentlemen farmers : and a 
class of degraded helots, little superior to the cattle they 
tended ; — these were your farm-servants. And for two such 
extreme classes, — necessary result of such a state of things, 
— had this unfortunate though highly eulogised district 
parted with a moral, intelligent, high-minded peasantry, — - 
the true boast and true riches of their country." 

" I have, I think, observed something like what you 
describe," I said. 

" I give," he replied, " but one instance of a thousand. 
But mark how the sun's lower disc has just reached the line 
of the horizon, and how the long level rule of light stretches 
to the very innermost recess of the cave. It darkens as 
the orb sinks. And see how the gauze-like shadows creep 
on from the sea, film after film; and now they have reached 
the ivy that mantles round the castle of the Bruce. Are 
you acquainted with Barbour?" 

" Well," I said ; — " a spirited, fine old fellow, who loved 
his country, and did much for it. I could once repeat all 
his chosen passages. Do you remember how he describes 
King Robert's rencounter with the English knight?" 

My companion sat up erect, and, clenching his fist, 
began repeating the passage, with a power and animation 
that seemed to double its inherent energy and force. 

"Glorious old Barbour!" ejaculated he, when he had 
finished the description ; " many a heart has beat all the 
higher, when the bale-fires were blazing, through the tutor- 
age of thy noble verses ! Blind Harry, too, — what has not 
his country owed to him !" 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 63 

"Ah, they have long since been banished from our 
popular literature," I said ; " and yet Blind Harry's ' Wal- 
lace/ as Hailes tells us, was at one time the very Bible of 
the Scotch. But love of country seems to be getting old- 
fashioned among us; and we have become philosophic 
enough to set up for citizens of the world." 

" All cold pretence," rejoined my companion, — "an effect 
of that small wisdom we have just been decrying. Cosmo- 
politism, as we are accustomed to define it, can be no virtue 
of the present age, nor yet of the next, nor perhaps for cen- 
turies to come. Even when it shall have attained to its 
best, and when it may be most safely indulged in, it is 
according to the nature of man that, instead of running 
counter to the love of country, it should exist as but a 
wider diffusion of the feeling, and form, as it were, a wider 
circle round it. It is absurdity itself to oppose the love of 
our country to that of our race." 

"Do I rightly understand you?" I said. "You look 
forward to a time when the patriot may safely expand into 
the citizen of the world ; but in the present age he would 
do well, you think, to confine his energies within the inner 
circle of country." 

" Decidedly," he rejoined : "man should love his species 
at all times ; but it is ill with him if, in times like the 
present, he loves not his country more. The spirit of war 
and aggression is yet abroad : there are laws to be estab- 
lished, rights to be defended, invaders to be repulsed, 
tyrants to be deposed. And who but the patriot is equal 
to these things ? We are not yet done with the Bruces, the 
Wallaces, the Tells, the Washingtons, — yes, the Washing- 



64 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

tons, whether they fight for or against us, — we are not yet 
done with them. The cosmopolite is but a puny abortion, 
— a birth ere the natural time, — that at once endangers 
the life, and betrays the weakness of the country that bears 
him. Would that he were sleeping in his elements till his 
proper time ! But we are getting ashamed of our country, 
of our language, our manners, our music, our literature ; 
nor shall we have enough of the old spirit left us to assert 
our liberties or fight our battles. Oh for some Barbour or 
Blind Harry of the present day, to make us more proud of 
our country!" 

I quoted the famous saying of Fletcher of Saltoun — 
"Allow me to make the songs of a country, and I will 
allow you to make its laws." 

" But here," I said, " is our lugger stealing round Turn- 
berry Head. We shall soon part, perhaps for ever ; and I 
would fain know with whom I have spent an hour so agree- 
ably, and have some name to remember him by. My own 
name is Matthew Lindsay. I am a native of Irvine." 

" And I," said the young man, rising and cordially grasp- 
ing the proffered hand, " am a native of Ayr. My name is 
Robert Burns." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 6$ 



CHAPTER IL 

" If friendless, low, we meet together, 
Then, sir, your hand, — my friend and brother.** 

— Deditation to G. Hamilton. 

A light breeze had risen as the sun sank, and our lugger, 
with all her sails set, came sweeping along the shore. She 
had nearly gained the little bay in front of the cave, and 
the countrymen from above, to the number of perhaps 
twenty, had descended to the beach, when all of a sudden, 
after a shrill whistle, and a brief half-minute of commotion 
among the crew, she wore round and stood out to sea. I 
turned to the south, and saw a square-rigged vessel shoot- 
ing out from behind one of the rocky headlands, and then 
bearing down in a long tack on the smuggler. " The sharks 
are upon us," said one of the countrymen, whose eyes had 
turned in the same direction : " we shall have no sport to- 
night/' We stood lining the beach in anxious curiosity. 
The breeze freshened as the evening fell ; and the lugger, 
as she lessened to our sight, went leaning against the foam 
in a long bright furrow, that, catching the last light of even- 
ing, shone like the milky way amid the blue. Occasionally 
we could see the flash and hear the booming of a gun 
from the other vessel ; but the night fell thick and dark ; 
the waves, too, began to lash against the rocks, drowning 
every feebler sound in a continuous roaring ; and every 
trace of both the chase and the chaser disappeared. The 



66 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

party broke up, and I was left standing alone on the beach, 
a little nearer home, but in every other respect in quite the 
same circumstances as when landed by my American friends 
on the wild coast of Connaught. " Another of Fortune's 
freaks!" I ejaculated ; "but 'tis well she can no longer sur- 
prise me." 

A man stepped out in the darkness, as I spoke, from 
beside one of the rocks : it was the peasant Burns, my 
acquaintance of the earlier part of the evening. 

" I have waited, Mr Lindsay," he said, " to see whether 
some of the country folks here, who have homes of their 
own to invite you to, might not have brought you along 
with them. But I am afraid you must just be content to 
pass the night with me. I can give you a share of my bed 
and my supper, though both, I am aware, need many 
apologies." I made a suitable acknowledgment, and we 
ascended the cliff together. " I live, when at home, with 
my parents," said my companion, " in the inland parish of 
Tarbolton; but for the last two months I have attended 
school here, and lodge with an old widow-woman in the 
village. To-morrow, as harvest is fast approaching, I return 
to my father." 

"And I," I replied, "shall have the pleasure of accom- 
panying you in at least the early part of your journey, on 
my way to Irvine, where my mother still lives." 

We reached the village, and entered a little cottage, that 
presented its gable to the street, and its side to one of the 
narrower lanes. 

" I must introduce you to my landlady," said my com- 
panion,- -" an excellent, kind-hearted old woman, with a 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 67 

fund of honest Scotch pride and shrewd good sense in her 
composition, and with the mother as strong in her heart as 
ever, though she lost the last of her children more than 
twenty years ago." 

We found the good woman sitting beside a small but very 
cheerful fire. The hearth was newly swept, and the floor 
newly sanded; and, directly fronting her, there was an 
empty chair, which seemed to have been drawn to its place 
in the expectation of some one to fill it. 

" You are going to leave me, Robert, my bairn/' said the 
woman, " an' I kenna how I sail ever get on without you. 
I have almost forgotten, sin' you came to live with me, that 
I have neither children nor husband." On seeing me she 
stopped short. 

" An acquaintance," said my companion, " whom I have 
made bold to bring with me for the night ; but you must 
not put yourself to any trouble, mother : he is, I daresay, 
as much accustomed to plain fare as myself. Only, how- 
ever, we must get an additional pint of yill from the 
clachan ; you know this is my last evening with you, and 
was to be a merry one at any rate." The woman looked 
me full in the face. 

" Matthew Lindsay ! " she exclaimed, — " can you have 
forgotten your poor old aunt Margaret I " I grasped her 
hand. 

" Dearest aunt, this is surely most unexpected ! How 
could I have so much as dreamed you were within a 
hundred miles of me ? " Mutual congratulation ensued. 

"This," she said, turning to my companion, "is the 
nephew I have so often told you about, and so often 



68 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

wished to bring you acquainted with. He is, like yourself, 
a great reader and a great thinker, and there is no need 
that your proud, kindly heart should be jealous of him ; 
for he has been ever quite as poor, and maybe the poorer 
of the two." After still more of greeting and congratula- 
tion, the young man rose. 

"The night is dark, mother," he said, "and the road to 
the clachan a rough one, Besides, you and your kinsman 
will have much to say to one another. I shall just slip out 
to the clachan for you ; and you shall both tell me, on my 
return, whether I am not a prime judge of ale." 

" The kindest heart, Matthew, that ever lived," said my 
relative, as he left the house. " Ever since he came to 
Kirkoswald, he has been both son and daughter. to me, and 
I shall feel twice a widow when he goes away." 

" I am mistaken, aunt," I said, " if he be not the 
strongest minded man I ever saw. Be assured he stands 
high among the aristocracy of nature, whatever may be 
thought of him in Kirkoswald. There is a robustness oi 
intellect, joined to an overmastering force of character, 
about him, which I have never yet seen equalled, though 
I have been intimate with at least one very superior mind, 
and with hundreds of the class who pass for men of talent. I 
have been thinking, ever since I met with him, of the Wil- 
liam Tells and William Wallaces of history — men who, in 
those times of trouble which unfix the foundations of society, 
step out from their obscurity to rule the destiny of nations." 

" I was ill about a month ago," said my relative, — " so 
very ill, that I thought I was to have done with the world 
altogether; and Robert was both nurse and physician to 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 69 

me. He kindled my fire, too, every morning, and sat up 
beside me sometimes for the greater part of the night. 
What wonder I should love him as my own child ? Had 
your cousin Henry been spared to me, he would now have 
been much about Robert's age." 

The conversation passed to other matters ; and in about 
half an hour my new friend entered the room, when we sat 
down to a homely but cheerful repast. 

" I have been engaged in argument for the last twenty 
minutes with our parish schoolmaster," he said, — " a shrewd, 
sensible man, and a prime scholar, but one of the most 
determined Calvinists I ever knew. Now, there is some- 
thing, Mr Lindsay, in abstract Calvinism that dissatisfies 
and distresses me ; and yet, I must confess, there is so 
much of good in the working of the system, that I would ill 
like to see it supplanted by any other. I am convinced, 
for instance, there is nothing so efficient in teaching the 
bulk of a people to think as a Calvinistic church." 

" Ah, Robert," said my aunt, " it does meikle mair nor 
that. Look round you, my bairn, an' see if there be a kirk 
in which puir sinful creatures have mair comfort in their 
sufferings, or mair hope in their deaths." 

" Dear mother," said my companion, " I like well enough 
to dispute with the schoolmaster, but I must have no dis- 
pute with you. I know the heart is everything in these 
matters, and yours is much wiser than mine." 

" There is something in abstract Calvanism," he con- 
tinued, " that distresses me. In almost all our researches 
we arrive at an ultimate barrier, which interposes its wall 
of darkness between us and the last grand truth in the 



70 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

series, which we had trusted was to prove a master-key to 
the whole. We dwell in a sort of Goshen ; there is light in 
our immediate neighbourhood, and a more than Egyptian 
darkness all around : and as every Hebrew must have 
known that the hedge of cloud which he saw resting on the 
landscape was a boundary, not to things themselves, but 
merely to his view of things, — for beyond there were cities 
and plains, and oceans and continents, — so we, in like 
manner, must know that the barriers of which I speak 
exist only in relation to the faculties which we employ — 
not to the objects on which we employ them. And yet, 
notwithstanding this consciousness that we are necessarily 
and irremediably the bound prisoners of ignorance, and 
that all the great truths lie outside our prison, we can 
almost be content that in most cases it should be so ; not, 
however, with regard to those great unattainable truths 
Ivhich lie in the track of Calvinism. They seem too 
important to be wanted, and yet want them we must; 
and we beat our very heads against the cruel barrier which 
separates us from them." 

"I am afraid I hardly understand you," I said. " Do 
assist me by some instance or illustration." 

" You are acquainted," he replied, " with the Scripture 
doctrine of predestination \ and in thinking over it in con- 
nexion with the destinies of man, it must have struck you 
that, however much it may interfere with our fixed notions 
of the goodness of Deity, it is thoroughly in accordance 
with the actual condition of our race. As far as we can 
know of ourselves and the things around us, there seems, 
through the will of Deity — for to what else can we refer it ? 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 71 

— a fixed invariable connexion between what we term 
cause and effect. Nor do we demand of any class of 
mere effects, in the inanimate or irrational world, that they 
should regulate themselves otherwise than the causes which 
produce them have determined. The roe and the tiger 
pursue, unquestioned, the instincts of their several natures ; 
the cork rises, and the stone sinks ; and no one thinks of 
calling either to account for movements so opposite. But 
it is not so with the family of man ; and yet our minds, our 
bodies, our circumstances, are but combinations of effects, 
over the causes of which we have no control. We did not 
choose a country for ourselves, nor yet a condition in life ; 
nor did we determine our modicum of intellect, or our 
amount of passion ; we did not impart its gravity to the 
weightier part of our nature, or give expansion to the 
lighter ; nor are our instincts of our own planting. How, 
then, being thus as much the creatures of necessity as the 
denizens of the wild and forest, — as thoroughly under the 
agency of fixed, unalterable causes as the dead matter 
around us, — why are we yet the subjects of a retributive 
system, and accountable for all our actions ? n 

" You quarrel with Calvinism," I said, " and seem one of 
the most thoroughgoing necessitarians I ever knew." 

" Not so," he replied ; " though my judgment cannot 
disprove these conclusions, my heart cannot acquiesce in 
them ; though I see that I am as certainly the subject of 
laws that exist and operate independent of my will as the 
dead matter around me, I feel, with a certainty quite as 
great, that I am a free, accountable creature. It is accord- 
ing to the scope of my entire reason that I should deem 



72 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

myself bound ; — it is according to the constitution of my 
whole nature that I should feel myself free. And in this 
consists the great, the fearful problem, — a problem which 
both reason and revelation propound ; but the truths which 
can alone solve it seem to lie beyond the horizon of dark- 
ness, and we vex ourselves in vain. 'Tis a sort of moral 
asymptote ; but its lines, instead of approaching through 
all space without meeting, seem receding through all space, 
and yet meet." 

" Robert, my bairn," said my aunt, " I fear you are wast- 
ing your strength on these mysteries, to your ain hurt. 
Did ye no see, in the last storm, when ye stayed out among 
the caves till cock-crow, that the bigger and stronger the 
wave, the mair was it broken against the rocks ? It 's just 
thus wi' the pride o' man's understanding, when he measures 
it against the dark things o' God. An' yet it 's sae ordered, 
that the same wonderful truths which perplex and cast 
down the proud reason should delight an' comfort the 
humble heart. I am a lone, puir woman, Robert. Bairns 
an' husband have gone down to the grave, one by one, an' 
now, for twenty weary years, I have been childless an* a 
widow. But trow ye that the puir lone woman wanted 
a guard, an' a comforter, an' a provider, through a' the lang, 
mirk nichts, an' a' the cauld, scarce winters, o' these twenty 
years? No, my bairn — I kent that HimseV was wi* me. 
I kent it by the provision He made, an' the care He took y 
an' the joy He gave. And how, think you, did He comfort 
me maist ? Just by the blessed assurance that a' my trials 
an' a' my sorrows were nae hasty, chance matters, but dis- 
pensations for my gude, an' the gude o' those He took to 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 73 

Himself that, in the perfect love an' wisdom o' His nature, 
He had ordained frae the beginning." 

"Ah, mother," said my friend, after a pause, "you 
understand the doctrine far better than I do. There are, 
I find, no contradictions in the Calvinism of the heart." 



CHAPTER III. 

" Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore, 

O'erhung with wild woods thick'ning green ; 
The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar 

Twined, amorous, round the raptured scene ; 
The flowers sprang wanton to be prest, 

The birds sang love on every spray, — 
Till too, too soon, the glowing west 
Proclaim' d the speed of winged day." 

— To Mary in Heaven. 

We were early on the road together. The day, though 
somewhat gloomy, was mild and pleasant ; and we walked 
slowly onward, neither of us in the least disposed to hasten 
our parting by hastening our journey. We had discussed 
fifty different topics, and were prepared to enter on fifty 
more, when we reached the ancient burgh of Ayr, where 
our roads separated. 

u I have taken an immense liking to you, Mr Lindsay," 
said my companion, as he seated himself on the parapet of 
the old bridge, " and have just bethought me of a scheme 
through which I may enjoy your company for at least one 
night more. The Ayr is a lovely river, and you tell me 
you have never explored it. We shall explore it together 



74 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

this evening for about ten miles, when we shall find our- 
selves at the farm-house of Lochlea. You may depend on 
a hearty welcome from my father, whom, by the way, I 
wish much to introduce to you as a man worth your know- 
ing; and as I have set my heart on the scheme, you are 
surely too good-natured to disappoint me." Little risk of 
that, I thought. I had, in fact, become thoroughly en- 
amoured of the warm-hearted benevolence and fascinating 
conversation of my companion, and acquiesced with the 
best good-will in the world. 

We had threaded the course of the river for several miles. 
It runs through a wild pastoral valley, roughened by thickets 
of copsewood, and bounded on either hand by a line of 
swelling, moory hills, with here and there a few irregular 
patches of corn, and here and there some little nest-like 
cottage peeping out from among the wood. The clouds, 
which during the morning had obscured the entire face of 
the heavens, were breaking up their array, and the sun was 
looking down in twenty different places through the open- 
ings, chequering the landscape with a fantastic though 
lovely carpeting of light and shadow. Before us there rose 
a thick wood, on a jutting promontory, that looked blue 
and dark in the shade, as if it wore mourning ; while the 
sunlit stream beyond shone through the trunks and branches 
like a river of fire. At length the clouds seem to have 
melted in the blue, — for there was not a breath of wind to 
speed them away ; and the sun, now hastening to the west, 
shone in unbroken effulgence over the wide extent of the 
dell, lighting up stream and wood, and field and cottage, in 
one continuous blaze of glory. We had walked on in 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 75 

silence for the last half-hour ; but I could sometimes hear 
my companion muttering as he went ; and when, in passing 
through a thicket of hawthorn and honeysuckle, we started 
from its perch a linnet that had been filling the air with its 
melody, I could hear him exclaim, in a subdued tone of 
voice, tl Bonny, bonny birdie ! why hasten frae me ? — I 
wadna skaith a feather o' yer wing." He turned round to 
me, and I could see that his eyes were swimming in 
moisture. 

"Can Hebe other/' he said, "than a good and bene- 
volent God who gives us moments like these to enjoy? 
Oh, my friend, without these Sabbaths of the soul, that 
come to refresh and invigorate it, it would dry up within 
us ! How exquisite," he continued, " how entire, the 
sympathy which exists between all that is good and fair in 
external nature, and all of good and fair that dwells in our 
own ! And oh, how the heart expands and lightens ! 
The world is as a grave to it, — a closely-covered grave ; 
and it shrinks, and deadens, and contracts all its holier 
and more joyous feelings under the cold earth-like pressure. 
But amid the grand and lovely of nature, — amid these 
forms and colours of richest beauty, — there is a disinter- 
ment, a resurrection, of sentiment; the pressure of our 
our earthly part seems removed ; and those senses of the 
mind, if I may so speak, which serve to connect our spirits 
with the invisible world around us, recover their proper 
tone, and perform their proper office." 

"Senses of the mind!" I said, repeating the phrase; 
" the idea is new to me ; but I think I catch your mean- 
ing." 



76 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

" Yes ; there are, — there must be such," he continued, 
with growing enthusiasm. " Man is essentially a religious 
creature, — a looker beyond the grave,: — from the very con- 
stitution of his mind ; and the sceptic who denies it is 
untrue, not merely to the Being who has made and who 
preserves him, but to the entire scope and bent of his 
own nature besides. Wherever man is, — whether he be a 
wanderer of the wild forest, or still wilder desert, — a 
dweller in some lone isle of the sea, or the tutored and 
full-minded denizen of some blessed land like our own ;— 
wherever man is, there is religion, — hopes that look for- 
ward and upward, — the belief in an unending existence and 
a land of separate souls." 

I was carried away by the enthusiasm of my companion, 
and felt for the time as if my mind had become the mirror 
of his. There seems to obtain among men a species of 
moral gravitation, analogous in its principles to that which 
regulates and controls the movements of the planetary 
system. The larger and more ponderous any body, the 
greater its attractive force, and the more overpowering its 
influence over the lesser bodies which surround it The 
earth we inhabit carries the moon along with it in its 
course, and is itself subject to the immensely more power- 
ful influence of the sun. And it is thus with character. It 
is a law of our nature, as certainly as of the system we 
inhabit, that the inferior should yield to the superior, and 
the lesser owe its guidance to the greater. I had hitherto 
wandered on through life almost unconscious of the exist- 
ence of this law ; or, if occasionally rendered half aware 
of it, it was only through a feeling that some secret in- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 77 

fluence was operating favourably in my behalf on the 
common minds around me. I now felt, however, for 
the first time, that I had come in contact with a mind 
immeasurably more powerful than my own : my thoughts 
seemed to cast themselves into the very mould — my senti- 
ments to modulate themselves by the very tone — of his. 
And yet he was but a russet-clad peasant — my junior by at 
least eight years — who was returning from school to assist 
his father, a humble tacksman, in the labours of the 
approaching harvest. But the law of circumstance, so 
arbitrary in ruling the destinies of common men, exerts 
but a feeble control over the children of genius. The 
prophet went forth commissioned by heaven to anoint a 
king over Israel, and the choice fell on a shepherd boy 
who was tending his father's flocks in the field. 

We had reached a lovely bend of the stream. There 
was a semicircular inflection in the steep bank, which 
waved over us, from base to summit, with hawthorn and 
hazel; and while one-half looked blue and dark in the shade, 
the other was lighted up with gorgeous and fiery splendour 
by the sun, now fast sinking in the west. The effect 
seemed magical. A little glassy platform that stretched 
between the hanging wood and the stream was whitened 
over with clothes, that looked like snow-wreaths in the hol- 
low ; and a young and beautiful girl watched beside them. 

" Mary Campbell!" exclaimed my companion; and in 
a moment he was at her side, and had grasped both her 
hands in his. " How fortunate — how very fortunate — I 
am ! r ' he said ; " I could not have so much as hoped to have 
seen you to-night, and yet here you are ! This, Mr Lindsay, 



78 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

is a loved friend of mine, whom I have known and valued 
for years, — ever, indeed, since we herded our sheep together 
under the cover of one plaid. Dearest Mary, I have had 
sad forebodings regarding you for the whole last month 
I was in Kirkoswald; and yet, after all my foolish fears, 
here you are ruddier and bonnier than ever." 

She was, in truth, a beautiful sylph-like young woman, — 
one whom I would have looked at with complacency in any 
circumstances ; for who that admires the fair and the lovely 
in nature, whether it be the wide-spread beauty of sky and 
earth, or beauty in its minuter modifications, as we see it 
in the flowers that spring up at our feet, or the butterfly 
that flutters over them, — who, I say, that admires the fair 
and lovely in nature, can be indifferent to the fairest and 
loveliest of all her productions ? As the mistress, however, 
of by far the strongest-minded man I ever knew, there was 
more of scrutiny in my glance than usual, and I felt a 
deeper interest in her than mere beauty could have 
awakened. She was perhaps rather below than above the 
middle size ; but formed in such admirable proportion, 
that it seemed out of place to think of size in reference 
to her at all. Who, in looking at the Venus de Medicis, 
asks whether she be tall or short ? The bust and neck 
were so exquisitely moulded, that they reminded me of 
Burke's fanciful remark, viz., that our ideas of beauty origi- 
nate in our love of the sex, and that we deem every object 
beautiful which is described by soft waving lines, resembling 
those of the female neck and bosom. Her feet and arms, 
which were both bare, had a statue-like symmetry and 
marble-like whiteness. But it was on her expressive and 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 79 

lovely countenance, now lighted up by the glow of joyous 
feeling, that nature seemed to have exhausted her utmost 
skill. There was a fascinating mixture in the expression 
of superior intelligence and child-like simplicity; a soft, 
modest light dwelt in the blue eye; and in the entire 
contour and general form of the features there was a 
nearer approach to that union of the straight and the 
rounded — which is founded in its perfection in only the 
Grecian face — than is at all common,, in our northern 
latitudes, among the descendants of either the Celt or the 
Saxon. I felt, however, as I gazed, that when lovers meet, 
the presence of a third person, however much the friend 
of either, must always be less than agreeable. 

11 Mr Burns," I said, " there is a beautiful eminence a few 
hundred yards to the right, from which I am desirous to 
overlook the windings of the stream. Do permit me to 
leave you for a short half-hour, when I shall return ; or, 
lest I weary you by my stay, 'twere better, perhaps, you 
should join me there." My companion greeted the pro- 
posal with a good-humoured smile of intelligence; and, 
plunging into the wood, I left him with his Mary. The 
sun had just set as he joined me. 

" Have you ever been in love, Mr Lindsay?" he said. 

" No, never seriously," I replied. " I am perhaps not 
naturally of the coolest temperament imaginable; but the 
same fortune that has improved my mind in some little 
degree, and given me high notions of the sex, has hitherto 
thrown me among only its less superior specimens. I am 
now in my eight and twentieth year, and I have not yet 
met with a woman whom I could love." 



80 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

"Then you are yet a stranger," he rejoined, "to the 
greatest happiness of which our nature is capable. I have 
enjoyed more heartfelt pleasure in the company of the 
young woman I have just left, than from every other 
source that has been opened to me from my childhood 
till now. Love, my friend, is the fulfilling of the whole 
law." 

"Mary Campbell, did you not call her?" I saii. "She 
is, I think, the loveliest creature I have ever seen; and I 
am much mistaken in the expression of her beauty if her 
mind be not as lovely as her person." 

" It is, it is," he exclaimed, — " the intelligence of an 
angel, with the simplicity of a child. Oh, the delight of 
being thoroughly trusted, thoroughly beloved, by one of the 
loveliest, best, purest-minded, of all God's good creatures ! 
— to feel that heart beating against my own, and to know 
that it beats for me only ! Never have I passed an evening 
with my Mary without returning to the world a better, 
gentler, wiser man. Love, my friend, is the fulfilling of the 
whole law. What are we without it? — poor, vile, selfish 
animals ; our very virtues themselves so exclusively virtues 
on our own behalf as to be well-nigh as hateful as our vices. 
Nothing so opens and improves the heart, — nothing so 
widens the grasp of the affections, — nothing half so effec- 
tually brings us out of our crust of self,— as a happy, 
well-regulated love for a pure-minded, affectionate-hearted 
woman !" 

" There is another kind of love of which we sailors see 
somewhat," I said, " which is not so easily associated with 
good." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 81 

"Love!" he replied: "no, Mr Lindsay, that is not the 
name. Kind associates with kind in all nature ; and love 
— humanizing, heart-softening love — cannot be the com- 
panion of whatever is low, mean, worthless, degrading, — 
the associate of ruthless dishonour, cunning, treachery, and 
violent death. Even independent of its amount of evil as 
a crime, or the evils still greater than itself which neces- 
sarily accompany it, there is nothing that so petrifies the 
feeling as illicit connexion." 

" Do you seriously think so?" I asked. 

" Yes, and I see clearly how it should be so. Neither 
sex is complete of itself, — each was made for the other, 
that, like the two halves of a hinge, they may become an 
entire whole when united. Only think of the scriptural 
phrase, one flesh : it is of itself a system of philosophy. 
Refinement and tenderness are of the woman; strength and 
dignity of the man. Only observe the effects of a thorough 
separation, whether originating in accident or caprice. You 
will find the stronger sex lost in the rudeness of partial 
barbarism ; the gentler wrapt up in some pitiful round of 
trivial and unmeaning occupation, — dry-nursing puppies, or 
making pincushions for posterity. But how much more 
pitiful are the effects when they meet amiss,— when the 
humanising friend and companion of the man is converted 
into the light, degraded toy of an idle hour, — the object of 
a sordid appetite that lives but for a moment, and then 
expires in loathing and disgust. The better feelings are 
iced over at their source, chilled by the freezing and dead- 
ening contact, where there is nothing to inspire confidence 
or solicit esteem ; and if these pass not through the first, 



82 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

the inner circle, — that circle within which the social affec- 
tions are formed, and from whence they emanate,— how 
can they possibly flow through the circles which lie beyond? 
But here, Mr Lindsay, is the farm of Lochlea ; and yonder 
brown cottage, beside the three elms, is the dwelling of 
my parents." 



CHAPTER IV. 

" From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, 
That makes her lov'd at home, revered abroad." 

— Cottar's Saturday Night 

There was a wide and cheerful circle this evening round 
the hospitable hearth of Lochlea. The father of my friend, 
— a patriarchal-looking old man, with a countenance the 
most expressive I have almost ever seen, — sat beside the 
wall, on a large oaken settle, which also served to accom- 
modate a young man, an occasional visitor of the family, 
dressed in rather shabby black, whom I at once set down as 
a probationer of divinity. I had my own seat beside him. 
The brother of my friend, (a lad cast in nearly the same 
mould of form and feature, except perhaps that his frame, 
though muscular and strongly set, seemed in the main less 
formidably robust, and his countenance, though expressive, 
less decidedly intellectual,) sat at my side. My friend had 
drawn in his seat beside his mother, a well-formed, comely 
brunette, of about thirty-eight, whom I might almost have 
mistaken for his elder sister; and two or three younger 
members of the family were grouped behind her. The 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 83 

fire blazed cheerily within the wide and open chimney, and, 
throwing its strong light on the faces and limbs of the circle, 
sent our shadows flickering across the rafters and the wall 
behind. The conversation was animated and rational, and 
every one contributed his share. But I was chiefly inter- 
ested in the remarks of the old man, for whom I already 
felt a growing veneration, and in those of his wonderfully 
gifted son. 

"Unquestionably, Mr Burns," said the man in black, 
addressing the farmer, "politeness is but a very shadow, 
as the poet hath it, if the heart be wanting. I saw to-night, 
in a strictly polite family, so marked a presumption of the 
lack of that natural affection of which politeness is but the 
portraiture and semblance, that truly I have been grieved 
in my heart ever since." 

"Ah, Mr Murdoch!" said the farmer, "there is ever 
more hypocrisy in the world than in the Church, and that, 
too, among the class of fine gentlemen and fine ladies who 
deny it most. But the instance " 

" You know the family, my worthy friend," continued 
Mr Murdoch : "it is a very pretty one, as we say vernacu- 
larly, being numerous, and the sons highly genteel young 
men, — the daughters not less so. A neighbour of the same 
very polite character, coming on a visit when I was among 
them, asked the father, in the course of a conversation to 
which I was privy, how he meant to dispose of his sons ; 
when the father replied, that he had not yet determined. 
The visitor said that, were he in his place, seeing they were 
all well-educated young men, he would send them abroad ; 
to which the father objected the indubitable fact, that 



84 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

many young men lost their health in foreign countries, 
and very many their lives. c True/ did the visitor rejoin ; 
' but, as you have a number of sons, it will be strange if 
some one of them does not live, and make a fortune. 
Now, Mr Burns, what will you, who know the feelings of 
paternity, and the incalculable, and assuredly, I may say, 
invaluable, value of human souls, think when I add, that 
the father commended the hint, as showing the wisdom of 
a shrewd man of the world ! " 

" Even the chief priests," said the old man, " pronounced 
it unlawful to cast into the treasury the thirty pieces of 
silver, seeing it was the price of blood ; but the gentility of 
the present day is less scrupulous. There is a laxity of 
principle among us, Mr Murdoch, that, if God restore us 
not, must end in the ruin of our country. I say laxity of 
principle; for there have ever been evil manners among 
us, and waifs in no inconsiderable number broken loose 
from the decencies of society, — more, perhaps, in my early 
days than there are now. But our principles at least were 
sound ; and not only was there thus a restorative and con- 
servative spirit among us, but, what was of not less import- 
ance, there was a broad gulf, like that in the parable, 
between the two grand classes, the good and the evil — a 
gulf which, when it secured the better class from contamina- 
tion, interposed no barrier to the reformation and return 
of even the most vile and profligate, if repentant. But this 
gulf has disappeared, and we are standing unconcernedly 
over it, on a hollow and dangerous marsh of neutral ground, 
which, in the end, if God open not our eyes, must as- 
suredly give way under our feet." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 85 

" To what, father/' inquired my friend, who sat listening 
with the deepest and most respectful attention, " do you 
attribute the change ? " 

" Undoubtedly," replied the old man, " there have been 
many causes at work ; and, though not impossible, it would 
certainly be no easy task to trace them all to their several 
effects, and give to each its due place and importance. But 
there is a deadly evil among us, though you will hear of it 
from neither press nor pulpit, which I am disposed to rank 
first in the number — the affectation of gentility. It has a 
threefold influence among us : it confounds the grand, 
eternal distinctions of right and wrong, by erecting into 
a standard of conduct and opinion that heterogeneous 
and artificial whole which constitutes the manners and 
morals of the upper classes. It severs those ties of 
affection and goodwill which should bind the middle to 
the lower orders, by disposing the one to regard whatever 
is below them with a too contemptuous indifference, and 
by provoking a bitter and indignant, though natural jealousy 
in the other, for being so regarded ; and, finally, by leading 
those who most entertain it into habits of expense, torturing 
their means, if I may so speak, on the rack of false opinion, 
disposing them to think, in their blindness, that to be 
genteel is a first consideration, and to be honest merely 
a secondary one, it has the effect of so hardening their 
hearts, that, like those Carthaginians, of whom we have 
been lately reading in the volume Mr Murdoch lent us, 
they offer up their very children, souls and bodies, to the 
unreal, phantom-like necessities of their circumstances." 

"Have I not heard you remark, father," said Gilbert, 



86 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

" that the change you describe has been very marked 
among the ministers of our Church ? " 

" Too marked and too striking," replied the old man ; 
"and, in affecting the respectability and usefulness of so 
important a class, it has educed a cause of deterioration 
distinct from itself, and hardly less formidable. There is 
an old proverb of our country — c Better the head of the 
commonalty than the tail of the gentry.' I have heard you 
quote it, Robert, oftener than once, and admire its homely 
wisdom. Now, it bears directly on what I have to remark : 
the ministers of our Church have moved but one step 
during the last sixty years ; but that step has been an all- 
important one ; — it has been from the best place in relation 
to the people, to the worst in relation to the aristocracy." 

"Undoubtedly, worthy Mr Burns," said Mr Murdoch, 
" there is great truth, according to mine own experience, in 
that which you affirm. I may state, I trust, without over- 
boasting or conceit, my respected friend, that my learning 
is not inferior to that of our neighbour the clergyman ; — it 
is not inferior in Latin, nor in Greek, nor yet in French 
literature, Mr Burns, and probable it is he would not much 
court a competition; and yet, when I last waited at the 
Manse regarding a necessary and essential certificate, Mr 
Burns, he did not so much as ask me to sit down." 

" Ah ! " said Gilbert, who seemed the wit of the family, 
" he is a highly respectable man, Mr Murdoch. He has a 
fine house, fine furniture, fine carpets — all that constitutes 
respectability, you know ; and his family is on visiting 
terms with that of the laird. But his credit is not so 
respectable, I hear." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. Zy 

" Gilbert," said the old man, with much seriousness, " it 
is ill with a people when they can speak lightly of their 
clergymen. There is still much of sterling worth and serious 
piety in the Church of Scotland ; and if the influence of its 
ministers be unfortunately less than it was once, we must 
not cast the blame too exclusively on themselves. Other 
causes have been in operation. The Church eighty years 
ago was the sole guide of opinion, and the only source of 
thought among us. There was, indeed, but one way in 
which a man could learn to think. His mind became the 
subject of some serious impression ; he applied to his Bible; 
and, in the contemplation of the most important of all con- 
cerns, his newly-awakened faculties received their first exer- 
cise. All of intelligence, all of moral good in him, all that 
rendered him worthy of the name of man, he owed to the 
ennobling influence of his Church ; and is it wonder that 
that influence should be all-powerful from this circumstance 
alone ? But a thorough change has taken place \ — new 
sources of intelligence have been opened up \ we have our 
newspapers, and our magazines, and our volumes of miscel- 
laneous reading ; and it is now possible enough for the most 
cultivated mind in a parish to be the least moral and the 
least religious ; and hence necessarily a diminished influence 
in the Church, independent of the character of its ministers." 

I have dwelt too long, perhaps, on the conversation of 
the elder Burns ; but I feel much pleasure in thus develop- 
ing, as it were, my recollections of one whom his powerful- 
minded son has described, — and this after an acquaintance 
with our Henry Mackenzies, Adam Smiths, and Dugald 
Stewarts, — as the man most thoroughly acquainted with the 



88 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

world he ever knew. Never, at least, have I met with any 
one who exerted a more wholesome influence, through the 
force of moral character, on those around him. We sat 
down to a plain and homely supper. The slave question 
had about this time begun to draw the attention of a few of 
the more excellent and intelligent among the people, and 
the elder Burns seemed deeply interested in it. 

" This is but homely fare, Mr Lindsay," he said, pointing 
to the simple viands before us, "and the apologists of 
slavery among us would tell you how inferior we are to the 
poor negroes, who fare so much better. But surely 'man 
liveth not by bread alone ! ' Our fathers, who died for 
Christ on the hill-side and the scaffold, were noble men, and 
never, never shall slavery produce such ; and yet they toiled 
as hard, and fared as meanly, as we their children." 

I could feel, in the cottage of such a peasant, and seated 
beside such men as his two sons, the full force of the remark. 
And yet I have heard the miserable sophism of unprincipled 
power against which it was directed, — a sophism so insult- 
ing to the dignity of honest poverty, — a thousand times 
repeated. 

Supper over, the family circle widened round the hearth; 
and the old man, taking down a large clasped Bible, seated 
himself beside the iron lamp which now lighted the apart- 
ment. There was deep silence among us as he turned over 
the leaves. Never shall I forget his appearance. He was 
tall and thin, and, though his frame was still vigorous, con- 
siderably bent. His features were high and massy; the 
complexion still retained much of the freshness of youth, 
and the eye all its intelligence ; but the locks were waxing 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 89 

thin and gray round his high, thoughtful forehead ; and the 
upper part of the head, which was elevated to an unusual 
height, was bald. There was an expression of the deepest 
seriousness on the countenance, which the strong umbry 
shadows of the apartment served to heighten ; and when, 
laying his hand on the page, he half-turned his face to the 
circle, and said, " Let us worship God," I was impressed by 
a feeling of awe and reverence to which I had, alas ! been 
a stranger for years. I was affected, too, almost to tears, 
as I joined in the psalm; for a thousand half-forgotten 
associations came rushing upon me ; and my heart seemed 
to swell and expand as, kneeling beside him when he 
prayed, I listened to his solemn and fervent petition, that 
God might make manifest His great power and goodness 
in the salvation of man. Nor was the poor solitary 
wanderer of the deep forgotten. 

On rising from our devotions, the old man grasped me 
by the hand. "I am happy," he said, "that we should 
have met, Mr Lindsay. I feel an interest in you, and must 
take the friend and the old man's privilege of giving you 
an advice. The sailor, of all men, stands most in need of 
religion. His life is one of continued vicissitude, — -of 
unexpected success or unlooked-for misfortune ; he is ever 
passing from danger to safety, and from safety to danger ; 
his dependence is on the ever-varying winds, — his abode on 
the unstable waters. And the mind takes a peculiar tone 
from what is peculiar in the circumstances. With nothing 
stable in the real world around it on which it may rest, it 
forms a resting-place for itself in some wild code of belief. 
It peoples the elements with strange occult powers of good 



90 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

and evil, and does them homage, — addressing its prayers 
to the genius of the winds and the spirits of the waters. 
And thus it begets a religion for itself; for what else is 
the professional superstition of the sailor ? Substitute, my 
friend, for this, — (shall I call it unavoidable superstition?) 
— this natural religion of the sea, — the religion of the Bible. 
Since you must be a believer in the supernatural, let your 
belief be true ; let your trust be on Him who faileth not, 
— your anchor within the vail ; and all shall be well, be 
your destiny for this world what it may." 

We parted for the night, and I saw him no more. 

Next morning, Robert accompanied me for several miles 
on my way. I saw, for the last half-hour, that he had 
something to communicate, and yet knew not how to set 
about it ; and so I made a full stop. 

" You have something to tell me, Mr Burns," I said : 
" need I assure you that I am one you are in, no danger 
from trusting?" He blushed deeply, and I saw him for 
the first time, hesitate and falter in his address. 

" Forgive me," he at length said ; " believe me, Mr 
Lindsay, I would be the last in the world to hurt the feel- 
ings of a friend, — a — a — but you have been left among us 
penniless, and I have a very little money which I have 
no use for, — none in the least. Will you not favour me 
by accepting it as a loan?" 

I felt the full and generous delicacy of the proposal, and, 
with moistened eyes and a swelling heart, availed myself 
of his kindness. The sum he tendered did not much ex- 
ceed a guinea ; but the yearly earnings of the peasant Burns 
fell, at this period of his life, rather below eight pounds. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 91 



CHAPTER V. 

" Corbies an' clergy are a shot right kittle." — Brigs of Ayr. 

The years passed, and I was again a dweller on the sea ; 
but the ill fortune which had hitherto tracked me like a 
bloodhound seemed at length as if tired in the pursuit, and 
I was now the master of a West India trader, and had 
begun to lay the foundation of that competency which has 
secured to my declining years the quiet and comfort which, 
for the latter part of my life, it has been my happiness to 
enjoy. My vessel had arrived at Liverpool in the latter 
part of the year 1784; and I had taken coach for Irvine, 
to visit my mother, whom I had not seen for several years. 
There was a change of passengers at every stage; but I 
saw little in any of them to interest me, till within about 
a score of miles of my destination, when I met with an 
old respectable townsman, a friend of my father's. There 
was but another passenger in the coach, a north-country 
gentleman from the West Indies. I had many questions 
to ask my townsman, and many to answer, and the time 
passed lightly away. 

" Can you tell me aught of the Burnses of Lochlea?" I 
inquired, after learning that my mother and my other 
relatives were well. " I met with the young man Robert 
about five years ago, and have often since asked myself 
what special end Providence could have in view in making 
such a man." 



92 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

" I was acquainted with old William Burns," said my 
companion, "when he was gardener at Denholm, an* got 
intimate wi' his son Robert when he lived wi' us at Irvine 
a twalmonth syne. The faither died shortly ago, sairly 
straitened in his means, I 'm fear'd, an' no very square wi' 
the laird ; an' ill wad he hae liked that; for an honester 
man never breathed. Robert, puir chield, is no very easy 
either." 

" In his circumstances?" I said. 

"Ay, an' waur. He gat entangled wi' the kirk on an 
unlucky sculduddery business, an' has been writing bitter, 
wicked ballads on a' the gude ministers in the country 
ever sin syne. I 'm vexed it 's on them he suld hae fallen ; 
an' yet they hae been to blame too." 

"Robert Burns so entangled, so occupied!" I exclaimed; 
"you grieve and astonish me." 

"We are puir creatures, Matthew," said the old man; 
" strength and weakness are often next-door neighbours in 
the best o' us ; nay, what is our vera strength ta'en on the 
a'e side, may be our very weakness ta'en on the ither. 
Never was there a stancher, firmer fallow than Robert 
Burns ; an', now that he has ta'en a wrang step, puir chield, 
that vera stanchness seems just a weak want o' ability 
to yield. He has planted his foot where it lighted by 
mishanter, and a* the gude an' ill in Scotland wadna 
budge him frae the spot." 

" Dear me ! that so powerful a mind should be so 
frivolously engaged! Making ballads, you say? With 
what success?" 

" Ah, Matthew, lad, when the strong man puts out his 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 93 

strength," said my companion, " there 's naething frivolous 
in the matter, be his object what it may. Robert's ballads 
are far, far aboon the best things ever seen in Scotland 
afore. We auld folk dinna ken whether maist to blame or 
praise them ; but they keep the young people laughing frae 
the a'e nuik o the shire till the ither." 

11 But how," I inquired, " have the better clergy rendered 
themselves obnoxious to Burns? The laws he has vio- 
lated, if I rightly understand you, are indeed severe, and 
somewhat questionable in their tendencies ; and even good 
men often press them too far." 

"And in the case of Robert," said the old man, "our 
clergy have been strict to the very letter. They're gude 
men an 7 faithfu' ministers ; but ane o' them at least, an' he 
a leader, has a harsh, ill temper, an* mistakes sometimes 
the corruption o' the auld man in him for the proper zeal 
o' the new ane. Nor is there ony o' the ithers wha kent 
what they had to deal wi' when Robert cam afore them. 
They saw but a proud, thrawart ploughman, that stood 
uncow'ring under the glunsh o' a haill session ; and so they 
opened on him the artillery o' the kirk, to bear down his 
pride. Wha could hae tauld them that they were but 
flushing their straw an' rotten wood against the iron scales 
o' Leviathan? An' now that they hae dune their maist, 
the record o' Robert's mishanter is lying in whity-brown 
ink yonder in a page o the session-buik ; while the 
ballads hae sunk deep, deep intil the very mind o' the 
country, and may live there for hunders and hunders o' 
years." 

" You seem to contrast, in this business," I said, M our 



94 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

better with what you must deem our inferior clergy. You 
mean, do you not, the Higher and Lower parties in our 
Church ? How are they getting on now ? " 

" Never worse," replied the old man ; "an' oh, it's surely 
ill when the ministers o' peace become the very leaders o' 
contention ! But let the blame rest in the right place. 
Peace is surely a blessing frae heaven, — no a gude wark 
demanded frae man ; an' when it grows our duty to be in 
war, it's an ill thing to be in peace. Our Evangelicals are 
stan'in/ puir folk, whar their faithers stood; an' if they 
maun either fight or be beaten frae their post, why, it 's just 
their duty to fight. But the Moderates are r^nin' mad 
a'thegither amang us ; signing our auld Confession just that 
they may get intil the Kirk to preach against it ; paring the 
New Testament doun to the vera standard o' heathen 
Plawto; and sinking a'e doctrine after anither, till they 
leave ahint naething but Deism that might scunner an 
infidel. Deed, Matthew, if there comena a change amang 
them, an' that sune, they'll swamp the puir Kirk a'thegither. 
The cauld morality, that never made ony ane mair moral, 
tak's nae haud o' the people ; an' patronage, as meikle's 
they roose it, winna keep up either kirk or manse o' itseF. 
Sorry I am, sin' Robert has entered on the quarrel at a', it 
suld hae been on the wrang side." 

" One of my chief objections," I said, "to the religion of 
the Moderate party is, that it is of no use." 

" A gey serious ane," rejoined the old man ; " but maybe 
there's a waur still. I'm unco vexed for Robert, baith on 
his worthy faither's account and his ain. He's a fearsome 
fellow when ance angered, but an honest, warm-hearted 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS, 95 

chield for a' that; an' there 's mair sense in yon big head o' 
his than in ony ither twa in the country." 

" Can you tell me aught," said the north-country gentle- 
man, addresssing my companion, " of Mr R , the 

chapel minister in K ? I was once one of his pupils 

in the far north ; but I have heard nothing of him since he 
left Cromarty." 

"Why," rejoined the old man, "he's just the man that, 
mair nor a' the rest, has borne the brunt o' Robert's fear- 
some waggery. Did ye ken him in Cromarty, say ye ? " 

" He was parish schoolmaster there," said the gentleman, 
"for twelve years; and for six of these I attended his 
school. I cannot help respecting him ; but no one ever 
loved him. Never, surely, was there a man at once so 
unequivocally honest and so thoroughly unamiable." 

"You must have found him a rigid disciplinarian," I 
said. 

" He was the most so," he replied, " from the days of 
Dionysius at least, that ever taught a school. I remember, 
there was a poor fisher-boy among us named Skinner, who, 
as is customary in Scottish schools, as you must know, 
blew the horn for gathering the scholars, and kept the 
catalogue and the key ; and who, in return, was educated 
by the master, and received some little gratuity from the 
scholars besides. On one occasion the key dropped out of 
his pocket; and when school-time came, the irascible 
dominie had to burst open the door with his foot. He 
raged at the boy with a fury so insane, and beat hirn so 
unmercifully, that the other boys, gathering heart in the 
extremity of the case, had to rise en masse and tear him out 



96 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

of his hands. But the curious part of the story is yet to 
come. Skinner has been a fisherman for the last twelve 
years j but never has he been seen disengaged for a 
moment, from that time to this, without mechanically 
thrusting his hand into the key pocket." 

Our companion furnished us with two or three other 

anecdotes of Mr R . He told us of a lady who was so 

pvercome by sudden terror on unexpectedly seeing him, 
many years after she had quitted his school, in one of the 
pulpits of the south, that she fainted away ; and of another 
of his scholars, named M'Glashan, a robust, daring fellow 
of six feet, who, when returning to Cromarty from some of 
the colonies, solaced himself by the way with thoughts of 
the hearty drubbing with which he was to clear off all his 
old scores with the dominie. 

"Ere his return, however,' 7 continued the gentleman, 

" Mr R had quitted the parish ; and, had it chanced 

otherwise, it is questionable whether M'Glashan, with all 
his strength and courage, would have gained anything in an 
encounter with one of the boldest and most powerful men 
in the country." 

Such were some of the chance glimpses which I gained 
at this time of by far the most powerful of the opponents of 
Burns. He w r as a good, conscientious man; but unfor- 
tunate in a harsh, violent temper, and in sometimes mis- 
taking, as my old townsman remarked, the dictates of that 
temper for those of duty. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 97 



CHAPTER VI. 

%< It's hardly in a body's pow'r 
To keep at times frae being sour, 

To see how things are shar'd, — 
How best o' chiels are whiles in want, 
While coofs on countless thousands rant, 
And kenna how to wair 't." 

— Epistle to Davie. 

I visited my friend, a few days after my arrival in Irvine, 
at the farm-house of Mossgiel, to which, on the death of 
his father, he had removed with his brother Gilbert and his 
mother. I could not avoid observing that his manners 
were considerably changed : my welcome seemed less kind 
and hearty than I could have anticipated from the warm- 
hearted peasant of five years ago ; and there was a stern 
and almost supercilious elevation in his bearing which at 
first pained and offended me. I had met with him as he 
was returning from the fields after the labours of the day : 
the dusk of twilight had fallen ; and, though I had cal- 
culated on passing the evening with him at the farm-house 
of Mossgiel, so displeased was I, that after our first greeting 
I had more than half-changed my mind. The recollection 
of his former kindness to me, however, suspended the feel- 
ing, and I resolved on throwing myself on his hospitality 
for the night, however cold the welcome. 

" I have come all the way from Irvine to see you, Mr 
Burns," I said. " For the last five years I have thought 



98 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

more of my mother and you than of any other two persons 
in the country. May I not calculate, as of old, on my 
supper and a bed?" 

There was an instantaneous change in his expression. 

"Pardon me, my friend," he said, grasping my hand: 
"I have, unwittingly, been doing you wrong. One may 
surely be the master of an Indiaman, and in possession of a 
heart too honest to be spoiled by prosperity. " 

The remark served to explain the haughty coldness of 
his manner which had so displeased me, and which was 
but the unwillingly assumed armour of a defensive pride. 

" There, brother," he said, throwing down some plough- 
irons which he carried ; " send wee Davoc with these to the 
smithy, and bid him tell Rankin I won't be there to-night. 
The moon is rising, Mr Lindsay : shall we not have a stroll 
together through the coppice ?" 

" That of all things," I replied ; and, parting from Gil- 
bert, we struck into the wood. 

The evening, considering the lateness of the season — for 
winter had set in — was mild and pleasant. The moon at 
full was rising over the Cumnock hills, and casting its faint 
light on the trees that rose around us, in their winding- 
sheets of brown and yellow, like so many spectres, or that, 
in the more exposed glades and openings of the wood, 
stretched their long, naked arms to the sky. A light breeze 
went rustling through the withered grass ; and I could see 
the faint twinkling of the falling leaves, as they came 
showering down on every side of us. 

"We meet in the midst of death and desolation/' said 
my companion ; " we parted when all around us was fresh 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 99 

and beautiful. My father was with me then, and— and 
Mary Campbell ; and now " 

" Mary ! your Mary \ n I exclaimed, — " the young, — the 
beautiful, — alas ! is she also gone?" 

" She has left me," he said, — " left me. Mary is in her 
grave !" 

I felt my heart swell as the image of that loveliest of 
creatures came rising to my view in all her beauty, as I had 
seen her by the river side, and I knew not what to reply. 

" Yes," continued my friend, " she is in her grave. We 
parted for a few days, to re-unite, as we hoped, for ever ; 
and ere those few days had passed she was in her grave. 
But I was unworthy of her, — unworthy even then; and 
now But she is in her grave !" 

I grasped his hand. " It is difficult," I said, " to bid 
the heart submit to those dispensations ; and oh, how 
utterly impossible to bring it to listen ! But life, — your 
life, my friend, must not be passed in useless sorrow. I 
am convinced, — and often have I thought of it since our 
last meeting, — that yours is no vulgar destiny, though I 
know not to what it tends." 

"Downwards!" he exclaimed, — "it tends downwards; 
I see it, I feel it ; the anchor of my affection is gone, and 
I drift shoreward on the rocks." 

" ? Twere ruin," I exclaimed, " to think so !" 

" Not half an hour ere my father died," he continued, 
"he expressed a wish to rise and sit once more in his 
chair, and we indulged him. But, alas ! the same feeling 
of uneasiness which had prompted the wish remained with 
him still, and he sought to return again to his bed. ' It is 



ioo TALES AND SKETCHES. 

not by quitting the bed or the chair/ he said, ' that I need 
seek for ease : it is by quitting the body.' I am oppressed, 
Mr Lindsay, by a somewhat similar feeling of uneasiness, 
and at times would fain cast the blame on the circumstances 
in which I am placed. But I may be as far mistaken as my 
poor father. I would fain live at peace with all mankind ; 
nay, more, I would fain love and do good to them all • but 
the villain and the oppressor come to set their feet on my 
very neck, and crush me into the mire, and must I not 
resist ? And when, in some luckless hour, I yield to my 
passions, — to those fearful passions that must one day over- 
whelm me, — when I yield, and my whole mind is darkened 
by remorse, and I groan under the discipline of conscience, 
— then comes the odious, abominable hypocrite, — the de- 
vourer of widows' houses and the substance of the orphan, 
and demands that my repentance be as public as his own 
hollow, detestable prayers ; — and can I do other than resist 
and expose him? My heart tells me it was formed to 
bestow ; why else does every misery that I cannot relieve 
render me wretched ? It tells me, too, it was formed not 
to receive ; why else does the proffered assistance of even 
a friend fill my whole soul with indignation ? But ill do 
my circumstances agree with my feelings. I feel as if I 
were totally misplaced in some frolic of Nature, and wander 
onwards in gloom and unhappiness from my proper sphere. 
But, alas ! these efforts of uneasy misery are but the blind 
gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave." 

I again began to experience, as on a former occasion, the 
overmastering power of a mind larger beyond comparison 
than my own ; but I felt it my duty to resist the influence, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 101 

"Yes, you are misplaced, my friend," I said, — "perhaps 
more decidedly so than any other man I ever knew ; but 
is not this characteristic, in some measure, of the whole 
species ? We are all misplaced ; and it seems a part of the 
scheme of Deity that we should work ourselves up to our 
proper sphere. In what other respect does man so differ 
from the inferior animals as in those aspirations which lead 
him through all the progressions of improvement, from the 
lowest to the highest level of his nature ?" 

" That may be philosophy, my friend," he replied, " but 
a heart ill at ease finds little of comfort in it. You knew 
my father : need I say he was one of the excellent of the 
earth, — a man who held directly from God Almighty the 
patent of his honours? I saw that father sink broken- 
hearted into the grave, the victim of legalised oppression : 
yes, saw him overborne in the long contest which his high 
spirit and his indomitable love of the right had incited him 
to maintain, — overborne by a mean, despicable scoundrel, 
one of the creeping things of the earth. Heaven knows, I 
did my utmost to assist in the struggle. In my fifteenth 
year, Mr Lindsay, when a thin, loose-jointed boy, I did the 
work of a man, and strained my unknit and overtoiled 
sinews, as if life and death depended on the issue, till oft, 
in the middle of the night, I have had to fling myself from 
my bed to avoid instant suffocation, — an effect of exertion 
so prolonged and so premature. Nor has the man exerted 
himself less heartily than the boy. In the roughest, severest 
labours of the field I have never yet met a competitor. But 
my labours have been all in vain : I have seen the evil be- 
wailed by Solomon, — the righteous man falling down before 



102 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

the wicked." I could answer only with a sigh. " You are 
in the right," he continued, after a pause, and in a more 
subdued tone : " man is certainly misplaced : the present 
scene of things is below the dignity of both his moral and 
intellectual nature. Look around you" — (we had reached 
the summit of a grassy eminence which rose over the wood, 
and commanded a pretty extensive view of the surrounding 
country) ; " see yonder scattered cottages that in the faint 
light rise dim and black amid the stubble-fields. My heart 
warms as I look on them, for I know how much of honest 
worth and sound, generous feeling shelters under these 
roof-trees. But why so much of moral excellence united to 
a mere machinery for ministering to the ease and luxury of 
a few of perhaps the least worthy of our species, — creatures 
so spoiled by prosperity that the claim of a common nature 
has no force to move them, and who seem as miserably 
misplaced as the myriads whom they oppress ?" 

11 If I'm designed yon lordling's slave, — 

By nature's law designed, — 
Why was an independent wish 

E'er planted in my mind ? 
If not, why am I subject to 

His cruelty and scorn ? 
Or why has man the will and powei 

To make his fellow mourn?" 

" I would hardly know what to say in return, my friend," 
I rejoined, "did not you yourself furnish me with the 
reply. You are groping on in darkness, and, it may be, 
unhappiness, for your proper sphere ; but it is in ob&dience 
to a great though occult law of our nature, — a law general, 
as it affects the species, in its course of onward progression, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 103 

—particular, and infinitely more irresistible, as it operates 
on every truly superior intellect. There are men born to 
wield the destinies of nations, — nay, more, to stamp the 
impression of their thoughts and feelings on the mind of 
the whole civilised world. And by what means do we 
often find them roused to accomplish their appointed 
work ? At times hounded on by sorrow and suffering, 
and this, in the design of Providence, that there may be 
less of sorrow and suffering in the world ever after : at 
times roused by cruel and maddening oppression, that the 
oppressor may perish in his guilt, and a whole country 
enjoy the blessings of freedom. If Wallace had not 
suffered from tyranny, Scotland w r ould not have been 
free." 

" But how apply the remark ? " said my companion. 

11 Robert Burns," I replied, again grasping his hand, 
" yours, I am convinced, is no vulgar destiny. Your griefs, 
your sufferings, your errors even, the oppressions you have 
seen and felt, the thoughts which have arisen in your mind, 
the feelings and sentiments of which it has been the sub- 
ject, are, I am convinced, of infinitely more importance in 
their relation to your country than to yourself. You are, 
wisely and benevolently, placed far below your level, that 
thousands and ten thousands of your countrymen may be 
the better enabled to attain to theirs. Assert the dignity 
of manhood and of genius, and there will be less of wrong 
and oppression in the world ever after." 

I spent the remainder of the evening in the farm house 
of Mossgiel, and took the coach next morning for Liver- 
pool. 



io4 TALES AND SKETCHES. 



CHAPTER VII. 

•* His is that language of the heart 

In which the answering heart would speak,— 
Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, 

Or the smile light up the cheek ; 
And his that music to whose tone 

The common pulse of man keeps time, 
In cot or castle's mirth or moan, 

In cold or sunny clime." — American Poet. 

The love of literature, when once thoroughly awakened in 
a reflective mind, can never after cease to influence it. It 
first assimilates our intellectual part to those fine intellects 
which live in the world of books, and then renders our con- 
nexion with them indispensable, by laying hold of that 
social principle of our nature which ever leads us to the 
society of our fellows as our proper sphere of enjoyment. 
My early habits, by heightening my tone of thought and 
feeling, had tended considerably to narrow my circle of 
companionship. My profession, too, had led me to be 
much alone ; and now that I had been several years the 
master of an Indiaman, I was quite as fond of reading, and 
felt as deep an interest in whatever took place in the literary 
world, as when a student at St Andrews. There was much 
in the literature of the period to gratify my pride as a 
Scotchman. The despotism, both political and religious, 
which had overlaid the energies of our country for more 
than a century, had long been removed ; and the national 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 105 

mind had swelled and expanded under a better system of 
things, till its influence had become co-extensive with 
civilised man. Hume had produced his inimitable History, 
and Adam Smith his wonderful work, which was to revolu- 
tionise and new-model the economy of all the governments 
of the earth. And there, in my little library, were the 
Histories of Henry and Robertson, the philosophy of 
Karnes and Reid, the novels of Smollett and Mackenzie, 
and the poetry of Beattie and Home. But if there was no 
lack of Scottish intellect in the literature of the time, there 
was a decided lack of Scottish manners ; and I knew too 
much of my humble countrymen not to regret it. True, I 
had before me the writings of Ramsay and my unfortunate 
friend Ferguson ; but there was a radical meanness in the 
first, that lowered the tone of his colouring far beneath the 
freshness of truth ; and the second, whom I had seen perish, 
— too soon, alas ! for literature and his country, — had given 
us but a few specimens of his power when his hand was 
arrested for ever. 

My vessel, after a profitable though somewhat tedious 
voyage, had again arrived at Liverpool. It was late in 
December 1786; and I was passing the long evening in 
my cabin, engaged with a whole sheaf of pamphlets and 
magazines, which had been sent me from the shore. The 
Lounger was at this time in course of publication. I had 
ever been an admirer of the quiet elegance and exquisite 
tenderness of Mackenzie ; and though I might not be quite 
disposed to think, with Johnson, that "the chief glory of 
every people arises from its authors," I certainly felt all the 
prouder of my country from the circumstance that so accom- 



io6 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

plished a writer was one of my countrymen. I had read 
this evening some of the more recent numbers, — half-dis- 
posed to regret, however, amid all the pleasure they afforded 
me, that the Addison of Scotland had not done for the 
manners of his country what his illustrious prototype had 
done for those of England, — when my eye fell on the 
ninety-seventh number. I read the introductory sentences, 
and admired their truth and elegance. I had felt, in the 
contemplation of supereminent genius, the pleasure which 
the writer describes, and my thoughts reverted to my two 
friends, — the dead and the living. " In the view of highly 
superior talents, as in that of great and stupendous objects," 
says the essayist, " there is a sublimity which fills the soul 
with wonder and delight, — which expands it, as it were, 
beyond its usual bounds, — and which, investing our nature 
with extraordinary powers and extraordinary honours, in- 
terests our curiosity and flatters our pride." 

I read on with increasing interest. It was evident, from 
the tone of the introduction, that some new luminary had 
arisen in the literary horizon ; and I felt somewhat like a 
schoolboy when, at his first play, he waits for the drawing 
up of the curtain. And the curtain at length rose. " The 
person," continues the essayist, " to whom I allude," — and 
he alludes to him as a genius of no ordinary class, — "is 
Robert Burns, an Ayrshire ploughman." The effect on my 
nerves seemed electrical. I clapped my hands, and sprung 
from my seat, " Was I not certain of it ! Did I not fore- 
see it ! " I exclaimed. " My noble-minded friend, Robert 
Burns ! " I ran hastily over the warm-hearted and gener- 
ous critique, — so unlike the cold, timid, equivocal notices 



1 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 107 

with which the professional critic has greeted, on their first 
appearance, so many works destined to immortality. It 
was Mackenzie, the discriminating, the classical, the elegant, 
who assured me that the productions of this "heaven- 
taught ploughman were fraught with the high-toned feeling, 
and the power and energy of expression, characteristic of 
the mind and voice of a poet," — with the solemn, the 
tender, the sublime; that they contained images of pas- 
toral beauty which no other writer had ever surpassed, 
and strains of wild humour which only the higher masters 
of the lyre had ever equalled; and that the genius dis- 
played in them seemed not less admirable in tracing the 
manners, than in painting the passions, or in drawing the 
scenery of nature. I flung down the essay, ascended to 
the deck in three huge strides, leaped ashore, and reached 
my bookseller's as he was shutting up for the night. 

" Can you furnish me with a copy of ' Burns's Poems/ " 
I said, " either for love or money ? " 

" I have but one copy left," replied the man, " and here 
it is." 

I flung down a guinea. " The change/' I said, " I shall 
get when I am less in a hurry." 

'Twas late that evening ere I remembered that 'tis cus- 
tomary to spend at least part of the night in bed. I read 
on and on with a still increasing astonishment and delight, 
laughing and crying by turns. I was quite in a new world j 
all was fresh and unsoiled, — the thoughts, the descriptions, 
the images, — as if the volume I read were the first that had 
ever been written; and yet all was easy and natural, and 
appealed with a truth and force irresistible to the recollec- 



108 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

tions I cherished most fondly. Nature and Scotland met 
me at every turn. I had admired the polished composi- 
tions of Pope, and Gray, and Collins ; though I could not 
sometimes help feeling that, with all the exquisite art they 
displayed, there was a little additional art wanting still. 
In most cases the scaffolding seemed incorporated with 
the structure which it had served to rear; and though 
certainly no scaffolding could be raised on surer principles, 
I could have wished that the ingenuity which had been 
tasked to erect it had been exerted a little further in taking 
it down. But the work before me was evidently the pro- 
duction of a greater artist : not a fragment of the scaffold- 
ing remained, — not so much as a mark to show how it had 
been constructed. The whole seemed to have risen like 
an exhalation, and in this respect reminded me of the 
structures of Shakespeare alone. I read the inimitable 
"Twa Dogs," Here, I said, is the full and perfect reali- 
sation of what Swift and Dryden were hardy enough to 
attempt, but lacked genius to accomplish. Here are dogs 
— bona fide dogs — endowed, indeed, with more than human 
sense and observation, but true to character, as the most 
honest and attached of quadrupeds, in every line. And 
then those exquisite touches which the poor man, inured 
to a life of toil and poverty, can alone rightly understand ! 
and those deeply-based remarks on character, which only 
the philosopher can justly appreciate ! This is the true 
Catholic poetry, which addresses itself, not to any little 
circle, walled in from the rest of the species by some 
peculiarity of thought, prejudice, or condition, but to the 
whole human family. I read on. "The Holy Fair/' 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 109 

" Hallowe'en," " The Vision/' the " Address to the Deil," 
engaged me by turns; and then the strange, uproarious, 
unequalled " Death and Doctor Hornbook." This, I said, 
is something new in the literature of the world. Shake- 
speare possessed above all men the power of instant and 
yet natural transition, — from the lightly gay to the deeply 
pathetic, — from the wild to the humorous ; but the oppo- 
site states of feeling which he induces, however close the 
neighbourhood, are ever distinct and separate : the oil and 
the water, though contained in the same vessel, remain 
apart. Here, however, for the first time, they mix and 
incorporate, and yet each retains its whole nature and full 
effect. I need hardly remind the reader that the feat has 
been repeated, and with even more completeness, in the 
wonderful " Tarn o' Shanter." I read on. " The Cottar's 
Saturday Night " filled my whole soul : my heart throbbed, 
and my eyes moistened ; and never before did I feel half so 
proud of my country, or know half so well on what score it was 
rdid best in feeling proud. I had perused the entire volume, 
from beginning to end, ere I remembered I had not taken 
supper, and that it was more than time to go to bed. 

But it is no part of my plan to furnish a critique on the 
poems of my friend. I merely strive to recall the thoughts 
and feelings which my first perusal of them awakened, and 
this only as a piece of mental history. Several months 
elapsed from this evening ere I could hold them out from 
me sufficiently at arms' length, as it were, to judge of their 
more striking characteristics. At times the amazing amount 
of thought, feeling, and imagery which they contained, — 
their wonderful continuity of idea, without gap or interstice, 



no TALES AND SKETCHES. 

— seemed to me most to distinguish them. At times they 
reminded me, compared with the writings of smoother 
poets, of a collection of medals, which, unlike the thin 
polished coin of the kingdom, retained all the significant 
and pictorial roughnesses of the original die. But when, 
after the lapse of weeks, months, years, I found them rising 
up in my heart on every occasion, as naturally as if they 
had been the original language of all my feelings and 
emotions, — when I felt that, instead of remaining outside 
my mind, as it were, like the writings of other poets, they 
had so amalgamated themselves with my passions, my 
sentiments, my ideas, that they seemed to have become 
portions of my very self, — I was led to a final conclusion 
regarding them. Their grand distinguishing characteristic 
is their unswerving and perfect truth. The poetry of Shake- 
speare is the mirror of life, — that of Burns the expressive 
and richly-modulated voice of human nature. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

" Burns was a poor man from his birth, and an exciseman from neces- 
sity ; but — I will say it ! — the sterling of his honest worth poverty 
could not debase ; and his independent British spirit oppression 
might bend, but could not subdue." — Letter to Mr Graha?n. 

I have been listening for the last half-hour to the wild 
music of an ^Eolian harp. How exquisitely the tones rise 
and fall ! now sad, now solemn, — now near, now distant. 
The nerves thrill, the heart softens, the imagination awakes 



RECOLLECTIONS OF B URNS. 1 1 1 

as we listen. What if that delightful instrument be ani- 
mated by a living soul, and these finely-modulated tones 
be but the expression of its feelings ! What if these dying, 
melancholy cadences, which so melt and sink into the 
heart, be — what we may so naturally interpret them — the 
melodious sinkings of a deep-seated and hopeless unhappi- 
ness ! Nay, the fancy is too wild for even a dream. But 
are there none of those fine analogies which run through 
the whole of nature and the whole of art, to sublime it into 
truth ? Yes, there have been such living harps among us, 
— beings, the tones of whose sentiments, the melody of 
whose emotions, the cadences of whose sorrows, remain 
to thrill, and delight, and humanise our souls. They seem 
born for others, not for themselves. Alas for the hapless 
companion of my early youth ! Alas for him, the pride 
of his country, the friend of my maturer manhood ! But 
my narrative lags in its progress. 

My vessel lay in the Clyde for several weeks during the 
summer of 1794 ; and I found time to indulge myself in a 
brief tour along the western coasts of the kingdom, from 
Glasgow to the Borders. I entered Dumfries in a calm, 
lovely evening, and passed along one of the principal 
streets. The shadows of the houses on the western side 
were stretched half-way across the pavement, while on the 
side opposite, the bright sunshine seemed sleeping on the 
jutting irregular fronts and high antique gables. There 
seemed a world of well-dressed company this evening in 
town ; and I learned, on inquiry, that all the aristocracy 
of the adjacent country, for twenty miles round, had come 
in to attend a county ball. They went fluttering along 



U2 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

the sunny side of the street, gay as butterflies, group suc- 
ceeding group. On the opposite side, in the shade, a 
solitary individual was passing slowly along the pavement. 
I knew him at a glance. It was the first poet, perhaps 
the greatest man, of his age and country. But why so 
solitary ? It had been told me that he ranked among his 
friends and associates many of the highest names in the 
kingdom, and yet to-night not one of the hundreds who 
fluttered past appeared inclined to recognise him. He 
seemed, too, — but perhaps fancy misled me, — as if care- 
worn and dejected, — pained, perhaps, that not one among 
so many of the great should have humility enough to notice 
a poor exciseman. I stole up to him unobserved, and 
tapped him on the shoulder. There was a decided fierce- 
ness in his manner as he turned abruptly round ; but, as 
he recognised me, his expressive countenance lighted up 
in a moment, and I shall never forget the heartiness with 
which he grasped my hand. 

We quitted the streets together for the neighbouring 
fields, and, after the natural interchange of mutual con- 
gratulations, — "How is it," I inquired, "that you do not 
seem to have a single acquaintance among all the gay and 
great of the country?" 

" I lie under quarantine," he replied ; " tainted by the 
plague of Liberalism. There is not one of the hundreds 
we passed to-night whom I could not once reckon among 
my intimates." 

The intelligence stunned and irritated me. "How in- 
finitely absurd !" I said. " Do they dream of sinking you 
into a common man ?" 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 113 

" Even so," he rejoined. " Do they not all know I have 
been a gauger for the last five years?" 

The fact had both grieved and incensed me long before. 
I knew, too, that Pye enjoyed his salary as poet-laureate 
of the time, and Dibdin, the song writer, his pension of 
two hundred a-year; and I blushed for my country. 

"Yes," he continued, — the ill-assumed coolness of his 
manner giving way before his highly- excited feelings, — 
"they have assigned me my place among the mean and 
the degraded, as their best patronage ; and only yesterday, 
after an official threat of instant dismission, I was told it 
was my business to act, — not to think. God help me ! 
what have I done to provoke such bitter result ? I have 
ever discharged my miserable duty, — discharged it, Mr 
Lindsay, however repugnant to my feelings, as an honest 
man ; and though there awaited me no promotion, I was 
silent. The wives or sisters of those whom they advanced 

over me had bastards to some of the family, and so 

their influence was necessarily greater than mine. But 
now they crush me into the very dust. I take an interest 
in the struggles of the slave for his freedom ; I express my 
opinions as if I myself were a free man ; and they threaten 
to starve me and my children if I dare so much as speak 
or think." 

I expressed my indignant sympathy in a few broken, 
sentences \ and he went on with kindling animation. 

" Yes, they would fain crush me into the very dust ! 
They cannot forgive me, that, being born a man, I should 
walk erect according to my nature. Mean-spirited and 
despicable themselves, they can tolerate only the mean- 



U4 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

spirited and the despicable ; and were I not so entirely in 
their power, Mr Lindsay, I could regard them with the 
proper contempt. But the wretches can starve me and my 
children, — and they know it ; nor does it mend the matter 
that I know, in turn, what pitiful, miserable, little creatures 
they are. What care I for the butterflies of to-night? 
They passed me without the honour of their notice ; and 
I, in turn, suffered them to pass without the honour of 
mine, and I am more than quits. Do I not know that 
they and I are going on to the fulfilment of our several 
destinies ? They to sleep, in the obscurity of their native 
insignificance, with the pismires and grasshoppers of all the 
past; and I to be whatever the millions of my unborn 
countrymen shall yet decide. Pitiful little insects of an 
hour ! What is their notice to me ! But I bear a heart, 
Mr Lindsay, that can feel the pain of treatment so un- 
worthy; and I must confess it moves me. One cannot 
always live upon the future, divorced from the sympathies 
of the present. One cannot always solace one's-self, under 
the grinding despotism that would fetter one's very thoughts, 
with the conviction, however assured, that posterity will 
do justice both to the oppressor and the oppressed. I am 
sick at heart ; and, were it not for the poor little things 
that depend so entirely on my exertions, I could as cheer- 
fully lay me down in the grave as I ever did in bed after 
the fatigues of a long day's labour. Heaven help me ! I 
am miserably unfitted to struggle with even the natural 
evils of existence ; ' how much more so when these are 
multiplied and exaggerated by the proud, capricious in- 
humanity of man ! " 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 115 

" There is a miserable lack of right principle and right 
feeling," I said, " among our upper classes in the present 
day ; but, alas for poor human nature ! it has ever been so, 
and, I am afraid, ever will. And there is quite as much of 
it in savage as in civilised life. I have seen the exclusive 
aristocratic spirit, with its one-sided injustice, as rampant 
in a wild isle of the Pacific, as I ever saw it among our- 
selves." 

c< 'Tis slight comfort," said my friend, with a melancholy 
smile, " to be assured, when one's heart bleeds from the 
cruelty or injustice of our fellows, that man is naturally 
cruel and unjust, and not less so as a savage than when 
better taught. I knew you, Mr Lindsay, when you were 
younger and less fortunate \ but you have now reached 
that middle term of life when man naturally takes up the 
Tory, and lays down the Whig ; nor has there been aught 
in your improving circumstances to retard the change ; 
and so you rest in the conclusion that, if the weak among 
us suffer from the tyranny of the strong, 'tis because human 
nature is so constituted \ and the case, therefore, cannot be 
helped ? " 

" Pardon me, Mr Burns," I said ; "I am not quite so 
finished a Tory as that amounts to." 

" I am not one of those fanciful declaimers," he con- 
tinued, " who set out on the assumption that man is free- 
born. I am too well assured of the contrary. Man is not 
free-born. The earlier period of his existence, whether as 
a puny child or the miserable denizen of an uninformed 
and barbarous state, is one of vassalage and subserviency. 
He is not born free \ he is not born rational ; he is not 



n6 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

born virtuous ; he is born to become all these. And woe 
to the sophist who, with arguments drawn from the uncon- 
firmed constitution of his childhood, would strive to render 
his imperfect because immature state of pupilage a perma- 
nent one ! We are yet far below the level of which our 
nature is capable, and possess, in consequence, but a small 
portion of the liberty which it is the destiny of our species 
to enjoy. And 'tis time our masters should be taught so. 
You will deem me a wild Jacobin, Mr Lindsay; but perse- 
cution has the effect of making a man extreme in these 
matters. Do help me to curse the scoundrels ! My 
business to act, — not to think ! " 

We were silent for several minutes. 

"I have not yet thanked you, Mr Burns," I at length 
said, "for the most exquisite pleasure I ever enjoyed. 
You have been my companion for the last eight years/' 

His countenance brightened. 

" Ah, here I am, boring you with my miseries and my 
ill-nature," he replied ; "but you must come along with me, 
and see the bairns and Jean, and some of the best songs I 
ever wrote. It will go hard if we hold not care at the 
staff's end, for at least one evening. You have not yet 
seen my stone punch-bowl, nor my Tarn o' Shanter, nor 
a hundred other fine things besides. And yet, vile wretch 
that I am, I am sometimes so unconscionable as to be 
unhappy with them all. But come along." 

We spent this evening together with as much of happi- 
ness as it has ever been my lot to enjoy. Never was there 
a fonder father than Burns, a more attached husband, or a 
warmer friend. There was an exuberance of love in his 



RECOLLECTIONS OF B URNS. 1 1 7 

large heart, that encircled in its flow relatives, friends, 
associates, his country, the world; and, in his kindlier 
moods, the sympathetic influence which he exerted over 
the hearts of others seemed magical. I laughed and cried 
this evening by turns. I was conscious of a wider and 
warmer expansion of feeling than I had ever experienced 
before. My very imagination seemed invigorated, by 
breathing, as it were, in the same atmosphere with his. 
We parted early next morning ; and when I again visited 
Dumfries, I went and wept over his grave. Forty years 
have now passed since his death ; and in that time, many 
poets have arisen to achieve a rapid and brilliant celebrity ; 
but they seem the meteors of a lower sky : the flush passes 
hastily from the expanse, and we see but one great light 
looking steadily upon us from above. It is Burns, who is 
exclusively the poet of his country. Other writers inscribe 
their names on the plaster which covers for the time the 
outside structure of society • — his is engraved, like that of 
the Egyptian architect, on the ever-during granite within. 
The fame of the others rises and falls with the uncertain 
undulations of the mode on which they have reared it ; — 
his remains fixed and permanent, as the human nature 
on which it is based. Or, to borrow the figures Johnson 
employs in illustrating the unfluctuating celebrity of a 
scarcely greater poet — " The sand heaped by one flood is 
scattered by another ; but the rock always continues in its 
place. The stream of time, which is continually washing 
the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes by, without 
injury, the adamant of Shakespeare," 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF 
UDOLL. 

In the autumn of 1759, the Bay of Udoll, an arm of the 
sea which intersects the southern shore of the Frith of 
Cromarty, was occupied by two large salmon-weirs, the 
property of one Allan Thomson, a native of the province 
of Moray, who had settled in this part of the country 
a few months before. He was a thin, athletic, raw-boned 
man, of about five feet ten, well-nigh in his thirtieth year, 
but apparently younger • erect and clean-limbed, with a set 
of handsome features, bright, intelligent eyes, and a pro- 
fusion of dark-brown hair curling around an ample expanse 
of forehead. For the first twenty years of his life he had 
lived about a farm-house, tending cattle when a boy, and 
guiding the plough when he had grown up. He then travelled 
into England, where he wrought about seven years as a 
common labourer. A novelist would scarcely make choice 
of such a person for the hero of a tale ; but men are to be 
estimated rather by the size and colour of their minds than 
the complexion of their circumstances; and this ploughman 
and labourer of the north was by no means a very common 
man. For the latter half of his life, he had pursued, in all 
his undertakings, one main design. He saw his brother 
rustics tied down by circumstance — that destiny of vulgar 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 119 

minds — to a youth of toil and dependence, and an old age 
of destitution and wretchedness ; and, with a force of 
character which, had he been placed at his outset on what 
may be termed the table-land of fortune, would have raised 
him to her higher pinnacles, he persisted in adding shilling 
to shilling, and pound to pound, not in the sordid spirit of 
the miser, but in the hope that his little hoard might yet 
serve him as a kind of stepping-stone in rising to a more 
comfortable place in society. Nor were his desires fixed 
very high ; for, convinced that independence and the hap- 
piness which springs from situation in life lie within the 
reach of the frugal farmer of sixty or eighty years, he 
moulded his ambition on the conviction, and scarcely 
looked beyond the period at which he anticipated his 
savings would enable him to take his place among the 
humbler tenantry of the country. 

Our friths and estuaries at this period abounded with 
salmon, — one of the earliest exports of the kingdom ; but, 
from the low state into which commerce had sunk in the 
northern districts, and the irregularity of the communica- 
tion kept up between them and the sister kingdom, by far 
the greater part caught on our shores were consumed by 
the inhabitants. And so little were they deemed a luxury, 
that it was by no means uncommon, it is said, for servants 
to stipulate with their masters that they should not have to 
diet on salmon often er than thrice a-week. Thomson, 
however, had seen quite enough, when in England, to 
convince him that, meanly as they were esteemed by his 
country-folks, they might be rendered the staple of a profit- 
able trade; and, removing to the vicinity of Cromarty, 



120 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

for the facilities it afforded in trading to the capital, he 
launched boldly into the speculation. He erected his two 
weirs with his own hands ; built himself a cottage of sods 
on the gorge of a little ravine sprinkled over with bushes 
of alder and hazel ; entered into correspondence with a 
London merchant, whom he engaged as his agent; and 
began to export his fish by two large sloops, which plied at 
this period between the neighbouring port and the capital. 
His fishings were abundant, and his agent an honest one ; 
and he soon began to realise the sums he had expended in 
establishing himself in the trade. 

Could any one anticipate that a story of fondly-cherished 
but hapless attachment, — of one heart blighted for ever, 
and another fatally broken, — was to follow such an intro- 
duction ? 

The first season of Thomson's speculation had come to a 
close : winter set in ; and, with scarcely a single acquaint- 
ance among the people in the neighbourhood, and little to 
employ him, he had to draw for amusement on his own 
resources alone. He had formed, when a boy, a taste for 
reading; and might now be found, in the long evenings, 
hanging over a book beside the fire. By day he went 
sauntering among the fields, calculating on the advantages 
of every agricultural improvement; or attended the fairs 
and trysts of the country, to speculate on the profits of the 
drover and cattle-feeder, and make himself acquainted with 
all the little mysteries of bargain-making. 

There holds early in November a famous cattle-market 
in the ancient barony of Ferintosh ; and Thomson had set 
out to attend it. The morning was clear and frosty, and he 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 121 

felt buoyant of heart and limb, as, passing westwards along 
the shore, he saw the huge Ben Wyvis towering darker and 
more loftily over the frith as he advanced, or turned aside, 
from time to time, to explore some ancient burying-ground 
or Danish encampment. There is not a tract of country of 
equal extent in the three kingdoms where antiquities of this 
class lie thicker than in that northern strip of the parish of 
Resolis which bounds on the Cromarty Frith. The old 
castle of Craig House, a venerable, time-shattered building, 
detained him, amid its broken arches, for hours; and he 
was only reminded of the ultimate object of his journey 
when, on surveying the moor from the upper bartisan, he 
saw that the groups of men and cattle, which since morning 
had been mottling in succession the track leading to the 
fair, were all gone out of sight, and that, far as the eye 
could reach, not a human figure was to be seen. The 
whole population of the country seemed to have gone to 
the fair. He quitted the ruins ; and, after walking smartly 
over the heathy ridge to the west, and through the long 
birch-wood of Kinbeakie, he reached about mid-day the 
little straggling village at which the market holds. 

Thomson had never before attended a thoroughly High- 
land market, and the scene now presented was wholly new 
to him. The area it occupied was an irregular opening in 
the middle of the village, broken by ruts, and dung-hills, 
and heaps of stone. In front of the little turf-houses on 
either side, there was a row of booths, constructed mostly 
of poles and blankets, in which much whisky, and a few of 
the simpler articles of foreign merchandise, were sold. In 
the middle of the open space there were carts and benches, 



122 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

laden with the rude manufactures of the country, — High- 
land brogues and blankets ; bowls and platters of beech ; 
a species of horse and cattle harness, formed of the twisted 
twigs of birch ; bundles of split fir, for lath and torches ; 
and hair tackle and nets for fishermen. Nearly seven thou- 
sand persons, male and female, thronged the area, bustling 
and busy ; and in continual motion, like the tides and eddies 
of two rivers at their confluence. There were country- 
women, with their shaggy little horses, laden with cheese 
and butter; Highlanders from the far hills, with droves of 
sheep and cattle ; shoemakers and weavers from the neigh- 
bouring villages, with bales of webs and wallets of shoes ; 
farmers and fishermen, engaged, as it chanced, in buying or 
selling; bevies of bonny lasses, attired in their gayest; 
ploughmen and mechanics; drovers, butchers, and herd- 
boys. Whisky flowed abundantly, whether bargain-makers 
bought or sold, or friends met or parted ; and, as the day 
wore later, the confusion and bustle of the crowd increased. 
A Highland tryst, even in the present age, rarely passes 
without witnessing a fray; and the Highlanders, seventy 
years ago, were of more combative dispositions than they 
are now; but Thomson, who had neither friend nor enemy 
among the thousands around him, neither quarrelled him- 
self nor interfered in the quarrels of others. He merely 
stood and looked on, as a European would among the frays 
of one of the great fairs of Bagdad or Astrakan. 

He was passing through the crowd towards evening, in 
front of one of the dingier cottages, when a sudden burst of 
oaths and exclamations rose from within, and the inmates 
came pouring out pell-mell at the door, to throttle and 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 123 

pummel one another, in inextricable confusion. A gray- 
headed old man, of great apparent strength, who seemed 
by far the most formidable of the combatants, was engaged 
in desperate battle with two young fellows from the remote 
Highlands, while all the others were matched man to man. 
Thomson, whose residence in England had taught him very 
different notions of fair play and the ring, was on the eve 
of forgetting his caution and interfering, but the interference 
proved unnecessary. Ere he had stepped up to the com- 
batants, the old man, with a vigour little lessened by age, 
had shaken off both his opponents ; and, though they stood 
glaring at him like tiger-cats, neither of them seemed in the 
least inclined to renew the attack. 

" Twa mean, pitiful kerns," exclaimed the old man, " to 
tak odds against ane auld enough to be their faither; and 
that, too, after burning my loof wi' the het aim ! But I 
hae noited their twa heads thegither ! Sic a trick ! — to bid 
me stir up the fire after they had heated the wrang end o' 
the poker ! Deil, but I hae a guid mind to gie them baith 
mair o't yet ! " 

Ere he could make good his threat, however, his daughter, 
a delicate-looking girl of nineteen, came rushing up to him 
through the crowd. " Father ! " she exclaimed, " dearest 
father ! let us away. For my sake, if not your own, let 
these wild men alone : they always carry knives ; and, 
besides, you will bring all of their clan upon you that 
are at the tryst, and you will be murdered." 

" No muckle danger frae that, Lillias," said the old man. 
" I hae little fear frae ony ane o' them ; an' if they come by 
twasome, I hae my friends here too. The ill-deedy wratches 



124 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

to blister a' my loof wi' the poker ! But come awa, lassie ; 
your advice is, I daresay, best after a\" 

The old man quitted the place with his daughter, and for 
the time Thomson saw no more of him. As the night 
approached, the Highlanders became more noisy and 
turbulent ; they drank, and disputed, and drove their very 
bargains at the dirk's point; and, as the salmon-fisher 
passed through the village for the last time, he could see 
the waving of bludgeons, and hear the formidable war-cry 
of one of the clans, with the equally formidable, " Hilloa ! 
help for Cromarty ! " echoing on every side of him. He 
kept coolly on his way, however, without waiting the result ; 
and, while yet several miles from the shores of Udoll, day- 
light had departed, and the moon at full had risen, red and 
huge in the frosty atmosphere, over the bleak hill of Nigg. 

He had reached the Burn of Newhall, — a small stream 
which, after winding for several miles between its double 
row of alders and its thickets of gorse and hazel, falls into 
the upper part of the bay, and was cautiously picking his 
way, by the light of the moon, along a narrow pathway 
which winds among the bushes. There are few places in 
the country of worse repute among believers in the super- 
natural than the Burn of Newhall, and its character seventy 
years ago was even worse than it is at present. Witch 
meetings without number have been held on its banks, and 
dead lights have been seen hovering over its deeper pools; 
sportsmen have charged their fowling-pieces with silver 
when crossing it in the night-time ; and I remember an old 
man who never approached it after dark without fixing a 
bayonet on the head of his staff. Thomson, however, was 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 125 

but little influenced by the beliefs of the period ; and he 
was passing under the shadow of the alders, with more of 
this world than of the other in his thoughts, when the 
silence was suddenly broken by a burst of threats and ex- 
clamations, as if several men had fallen a-fighting scarcely 
fifty yards away, without any preliminary quarrel, and with 
the gruffer voices there mingled the shrieks and entreaties 
of a female. Thomson grasped his stick, and sprang for- 
ward. He reached an opening among the bushes, and saw 
in the imperfect light the old robust Lowlander of the pre- 
vious fray attacked by two men armed with bludgeons, and 
defending himself manfully with his staff. The old man's 
daughter, who had clung round the knees of one of the 
ruffians,, was already thrown to the ground, and trampled 
under foot. An exclamation of wrath and horror burst 
from the high-spirited fisherman as, rushing upon the fellow 
like a tiger from its jungle, he caught the stroke aimed at 
him on his stick, and, with a side-long blow on the temple, 
felled him to the ground. At the instant he fell, a gigantic 
Highlander leaped from among the bushes, and, raising his 
huge arm, discharged a tremendous blow at the head of the 
fisherman, who, though taken unawares and at a disadvan- 
tage, succeeded, notwithstanding, in transferring it to his 
left shoulder, where it fell broken and weak. A desperate 
but brief combat ensued. The ferocity and ponderous 
strength of the Celt found their more than match in the 
cool, vigilant skill and leopard-like agility of the Lowland 
Scot ; for the latter, after discharging a storm of blows on 
the head, face, and shoulders of the giant, until he stag- 
gered, at length struck his bludgeon out of his hand, and 



126 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

prostrated his whole huge length by dashing his stick end- 
long against his breast. At nearly the same moment the 
burly old farmer, who had grappled with his antagonist, had 
succeeded in flinging him, stunned and senseless, against 
the gnarled root of an alder, and the three ruffians — for the 
first had not yet recovered — lay stretched on the grass. 
Ere they could secure them, however, a shrill whistle was 
heard echoing from among the alders, scarcely a hundred 
yards away. " We had better get home,' 7 said Thomson to 
the old man, " ere these fellows are reinforced by their 
brother ruffians in the wood." And, supporting the maiden 
with his one hand, and grasping his stick with the other, 
he plunged among the bushes in the direction of the path, 
and, gaining it, passed onward, lightly and hurriedly, with 
his charge ; the old man followed more heavily behind, 
and in somewhat less than an hour after they were all 
seated beside the hearth of the latter, in the farm-house of 
Meikle Farness. 

It is now more than forty years since the last stone of the 
very foundation has disappeared ; but the little grassy emin- 
ence on which the house stood may still be seen. There 
is a deep-wooded ravine behind, which, after winding 
through the table-land of the parish, like a huge crooked 
furrow, — the bed, evidently, of some antediluvian stream, — 
opens far below to the sea ; an undulating tract of field 
and moor, with here and there a thicket of bushes, and 
here and there a heap of stone, spreads in front. When I 
last looked on the scene, 'twas in the evening of a pleasant 
day in June. One-half the eminence was bathed in the 
red light of the setting sun, the other lay brown and dark 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 127 

in the shadow; a flock of sheep were scattered over the 
sunny side ; the herd-boy sat on the top solacing his leisure 
with a music famous in the pastoral history of Scotland, but 
now well nigh exploded, that of the stock and horn, and 
the air seemed filled with its echoes. I stood picturing to 
myself the appearance of the place ere all the inmates of 
this evening, young and old, had gone to the churchyard, 
and left no successors behind them ; and, as I sighed over 
the vanity of human hopes, I could almost fancy I saw an 
apparition of the cottage rising on the knoll. I could see 
the dark turf-walls ; the little square windows, barred below 
and glazed above ; the straw roof, embossed with moss and 
stone-crop ; and, high over-head, the row of venerable elms, 
with their gnarled trunks and twisted branches, that rose 
out of the garden-wall. Fancy gives an interest to all her 
pictures, — yes, even when the subject is but a humble cot- 
tage ; and when we think of human enjoyment, — of the 
pride of strength and the light of beauty, — in connexion 
with a few mouldering and nameless bones hidden deep 
from the sun, there is a sad poetry in the contrast which 
rarely fails to affect the heart. It is now two thousand 
years since Horace sung of the security of the lowly, and 
the unfluctuating nature of their enjoyments ; and every 
year of the two thousand has been adding proof to proof 
that the poet, when he chose his theme, must have thrown 
aside his philosophy. But the inmates of the farm-house 
thought little this evening of coming misfortune ; nor would 
it have been well if they had; their sorrow was neither 
heightened nor hastened by their joy. 

Old William Stewart, the farmer, was one of a class well- 



128 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

nigh worn out in the southern Lowlands, even at this 
period, but which still comprised in the northern districts 
no inconsiderable portion of the people, and which must 
always obtain in countries only partially civilised and little 
amenable to the laws. Man is a fighting animal from very 
instinct ; and his second nature, custom, mightily improves 
the propensity. A person naturally courageous, who has 
defended himself successfully in half a dozen different 
frays, will very probably begin the seventh himself; and 
there are few who have fought often and well for safety and 
the right who have not at length learned to love fighting 
for its own sake. The old farmer had been a man of war 
from his youth. He had fought at fairs and trysts, and 
weddings and funerals; and without one ill-natured or 
malignant element in his composition, had broken more 
heads than any two men in the country-side. His late 
quarrel at the tryst, and the much more serious affair 
among the bushes, had arisen out of this disposition ; for, 
though well-nigh in his sixtieth year, he was still as warlike 
in his habits as ever. Thomson sat fronting him beside 
the fire, admiring his muscular frame, huge limbs, and 
immense structure of bone. Age had grizzled his hair and 
furrowed his cheeks and forehead; but all the great 
strength, and well-nigh all the activity, of his youth, it 
had left him still. His wife, a sharp-featured little woman, 
seemed little interested in either the details of his adven- 
ture or his guest, whom he described as the " brave, hardy 
chield, wha had beaten twasome at the cudgel, — the vera 
littlest o' them as big as himser." 

" Och, gudeman," was her concluding remark, " ye aye 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 129 

stick to the auld trade, bad though it be ; an' I 'm feared 
that or ye mend ye maun be aulder yet. I 'm sure ye 
ne'er made your ain money o 't." 

"Nane o' yer nonsense," rejoined the farmer: "bring 
butt the bottle an' your best cheese. 

" The gudewife an' I dinna aye agree," continued the old 
man, turning to Thomson. "She's baith near-gaun an' 
new-fangled; an' I like aye to hae routh o' a' things, an' 
to live just as my faithers did afore me. Why sould I 
bother my head wi' improvidments, as they ca' them ? The 
country ; s gane clean gite wi' pride, Thomson ! Naething 
less sairs folk noo, forsooth, than carts wi' wheels to them ; 
an' it's no a fortnight syne sin' little Sandy Martin, the 
trifling cat, jeered me for yoking my owsen to the plough 
by the tail. What ither did they get tails for?" 

Thomson had not sufficiently studied the grand argu- 
ment of design in this special instance, to hazard a reply. 

"The times hae gane clean oot o' joint," continued the 
old man. " The law has come a' the length o' Cromarty 
noo ; an' for breaking the head o' an impudent fallow, ane 
runs, the risk o' being sent aff to the plantations. Faith, I 
wish oor ParHamenters had mair sense. What do they 
ken aboot us or oor country? Deil haet difference doo 
they rnak' atween the shire o' Cromarty an' the shire o' 
Lunnon; just as if we could be as quiet beside the red- 
wud Hielanman here, as they can be beside the Queen. 
Na, na, — naething like a guid cudgel : little wad their law 
hae dune for me at the Burn o' Newhall the merit." 

Thomson found the character of the old man quite a 
study in its way; and that of his wife — a very different, 



130 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

and, in the main, inferior sort of person, for she was 
mean-spirited and a niggard — quite a study too. But by 
far the most interesting inmate of the cottage was the old 
man's daughter, — the child of a former marriage. She 
was a pale, delicate, blue-eyed girl, who, without possess- 
ing much positive beauty of feature, had that expression 
of mingled thought and tenderness which attracts more 
powerfully than beauty itself. She spoke but little : that 
little, however, was expressive of gratitude and kindness 
to the deliverer of her father. Sentiments which, in the 
breast of a girl so gentle, so timid, so disposed to shrink 
from the roughnesses of active courage, and yet so conscious 
of her need of a protector, must have mingled with a feel- 
ing of admiration at finding in the powerful champion of 
the recent fray, a modest, sensible young man, of manners 
nea|b^3 quiet and unobtrusive as her own. She dreamed 
thJU^ht of Thomson; and her first thought, as she 
awakened next morning, was whether, as her father had 
urged, he was to be a frequent visitor at Meikle Farness. 
But an entire week passed away, and she saw no more of 
him. 

He was sitting one evening in his cottage, poring over a 
book j a huge fire of brushwood was blazing against the 
earthen wall, filling the upper part of the single rude cham- 
ber, of which the cottage consisted, with a dense cloud of 
smoke, and glancing brightly on the few rude implements 
which occupied the lower, when the door suddenly opened, 
and the farmer of Meikle Farness entered, acccompanied 
by his daughter. 

" Ha ! Allan, man," he said, extending his large hand, 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 131 

and grasping that of the fisherman • " if you winna come 
an' see us, we maun just come and see you. Lillias an' 
mysel' were afraid the gudewife had frichtened you awa,— 
for she 's a near-gaun sort o' body, an' maybe no owre kind- 
spoken ; but ye maun just come an' see us whiles, an' no 
mind her. Except at counting-time, I never mind her 
myser." Thomson accommodated his visitors with seats. 
"Yer life maun be a gay lonely ane here, in this eerie bit o' 
a glen," remarked the old man, after they had conversed 
for some time on different subjects; "but I see ye dinna 
want company a'thegither, such as it is," — his eye glancing, 
as he spoke, over a set of deal shelves, occupied by some 
sixty or seventy volumes. " Lillias there has a liking for 
that kind o' company too, an' spends some days mair o' 
her time amang her books than the gudewife or mysel' 
would wish." ^^^. 

Lillias blushed at the charge, and hung down hflj|^l : 
it gave, however, a new turn to the conversation; and 
Thomson was gratified to find that the quiet, gentle girl, 
who seemed so much interested in him, and whose 
gratitude to him, expressed in a language less equivocal 
than any spoken one, he felt to be so delicious a compli- 
ment, possessed a cultivated mind and a superior under- 
standing. She had lived under the roof of her father in 
a little paradise of thoughts and imaginations, the spon- 
taneous growth of her own mind ; and as she grew up to 
womanhood, she had recourse to the companionship of 
books ; for in books only could she find thoughts and 
imaginations of a kindred character. 

It is rarely that the female mind educates itself. The 



132 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

genius of the sex is rather fine than robust ; it partakes 
rather of the delicacy of the myrtle than the strength of the 
oak ; and care and culture seem essential to its full 
development. Who ever heard of a female Burns or 
Bloomfield? And yet there have been instances, though 
rare, of women working their way from the lower levels of 
intellect to well-nigh the highest — not wholly unassisted, 'tis 
true — the age must be a cultivated one, and there must be 
opportunities of observation ; but, if not wholly unassisted, 
with helps so slender, that the second order of masculine 
minds would find them wholly inefficient. There is a 
quickness of perception and facility of adaptation in the 
better class of female minds, — an ability of catching the 
tone of whatever is good from the sounding of a single 
note, if I may so express myself, — which we almost never 
meet with in the mind of man. Lillias was a favourable 
specimen of the better and more intellectual order of 
women ; but she was yet very young, and the process of 
self-cultivation carrying on in her mind was still incom- 
plete ; and Thomson found that the charm of her society 
arose scarcely more from her partial knowledge than from 
her partial ignorance. The following night saw him seated 
by her side in the farm-house of Meikle Farness ; and 
scarcely a week passed during the winter in which he did 
not spend at least one evening in her company. 

Who is it that has not experienced the charm of female 
conversation, — that poetry of feeling which develops all of 
tenderness and all of imagination that lies hidden in our 
nature ? When following the ordinary concerns of life, or 
engaged in its more active businesses, many of the better 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF [/DOLL. 133 

faculties of our minds seem overlaid : there is little of feel- 
ing, and nothing of fancy; and those sympathies which 
should bind us to the good and fair of nature lie repressed 
and inactive. But in the society of an intelligent and 
virtuous female there is a charm that removes the pressure. 
Through the force of sympathy, we throw our intellects for 
the time into the female mould ; our tastes assimilate to 
the tastes of our companion ; our feelings keep pace with 
hers ; our sensibilities become nicer and our imaginations 
more expansive ; and, though the powers of our mind may 
not much excel, in kind or degree, those of the great bulk 
of mankind, we are sensible that for the time we experience 
some of the feelings of genius. How many common men 
have not female society and the fervour of youthful pas- 
sion sublimed into poets? I am convinced the Greeks 
displayed as much sound philosophy as good taste in 
representing their muses as beautiful women. 

Thomson had formerly been but an admirer of the poets, 
— he now became a poet ; and had his fate been a kindlier 
one, he might perhaps have attained a middle place among 
at least the minor professors of the incommunicable art. 
He was walking with Lillias one evening through the 
wooded ravine. It was early in April, and the day had 
combined the loveliest smiles of spring with the fiercer 
blasts of winter. There was snow in the hollows; but 
where the sweeping sides of the dell reclined to the south, 
the violet and the primrose were opening to the sun. The 
drops of a recent shower were still hanging on the half- 
expanded buds, and the streamlet was yet red and turbid ; 
but the sun, nigh at his setting, was streaming in golden 



134 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

glory along the field, and a lark was carolling high in the 
air, as if its day were but begun. Lillias pointed to the 
bird, diminished almost to a speck, but relieved by the 
red light against a minute cloudlet. 

" Happy little creature !" she exclaimed : " does it not 
seem rather a thing of heaven than of earth? Does not its 
song frae the cloud mind you of the hymn heard by the 
shepherds ! The blast is but just owre, an' a few minutes 
syne it lay cowering and chittering in its nest; but its 
sorrows are a' gane,, an' its heart rejoices in the bonny 
blink, without a'e thought o' the storm that has passed, 
or the night that comes on. Were you a poet, Allan, 
like ony o' your twa namesakes, — he o' the ' The Seasons/ 
or he o' 'The Gentle Shepherd/ — I would ask you for 
a song on that bonny burdie." Next time the friends 
met, Thomson produced the following verses : — 

TO THE LARK. 

Sweet minstrel of the April cloud, 

Dweller the flowers among, 
Would that my heart were form'd like thine, 

And tuned, like thine, my song ! 
Not to the earth, like earth's low gifts, 

Thy soothing strain is given : 
It comes a voice from middle sky, — 

A solace breathed from heaven. 

Thine is the morn ; and when the sun 

Sinks peaceful in the west, 
The mild light of departing day 

Purples thy happy breast. 
And ah ! though all beneath that sun 

Dire pains and sorrows dwell, 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 135 

Rarely they visit, short they stay, 
Where thou hast built thy cell. 

When wild winds rave, and snows descend, 

And dark clouds gather fast, 
And on the surf-encircled shore 

The seaman's barque is cast, 
Long human grief survives the storm ; 

But thou, thrice happy bird ! 
No sooner has it pass'd away, 

Than, lo ! thy voice is heard. 

When ill is present, grief is thine ; 

It flies, and thou art free ; 
But ah ! can aught achieve for man 

What nature does for thee ? 
Man grieves amid the bursting storm ; 

When smiles the calm, he grieves ; 
Nor cease his woes, nor sinks his plaint, 

Till dust his dust receives. 

As the latter month of spring came on, the fisherman 
again betook himself to his weirs, and nearly a fortnight 
passed in which he saw none of the inmates of the farm- 
house. Nothing is so efficient as absence, whether self- 
imposed or the result of circumstances, in convincing a 
lover that he is truly such, and in teaching him how to 
estimate the strength of his attachment. Thomson had 
sat night after night beside Lillias Stewart, delighted with 
the delicacy of her taste and the originality and beauty 
of her ideas, — delighted, too, to watch the still partially- 
developed faculties of her mind shooting forth and ex- 
panding into bud and blossom under the fostering influence 
of his own more matured powers. But the pleasure which 
arises from the interchange of idea and the contemplation 
of mental beauty, or the interest which every thinking mind 



136 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

must feel in marking the aspirations of a superior intellect 
towards its proper destiny, is not love ; and it was only 
now that Thomson ascertained the true scope and nature 
of his feelings. 

" She is already my friend/' thought he : " if my schemes 
prosper, I shall be in a few years what her father is now ; 
and may then ask her whether she will not be more. Till 
then, however, she shall be my friend, and my friend only. 
I find I love her too well to make her the wife of either a 
poor, unsettled speculator, or still poorer labourer." 

He renewed his visits to the farm-house, and saw, with a 
discernment quickened by his feelings, that his mistress had 
made a discovery with regard to her own affections some- 
what similar to his, and at a somewhat earlier period. She 
herself could have perhaps fixed the date of it by referring 
to that of their acquaintance. He imparted to her his 
scheme, and the uncertainties which attended it, with his 
determination, were he unsuccessful in his designs, to do 
battle with the evils of penury and dependence without a 
companion; and, though she felt that she could deem it 
a happiness to make common cause with him even in such 
a contest, she knew how to appreciate his motives, and 
loved him all the more for them. Never, perhaps, in the 
whole history of the passion, were there two lovers happier 
in their hopes and each other. But there was a cloud 
gathering over them. 

Thomson had never been an especial favourite with the 
stepmother of Lillias. She had formed plans of her own for 
the settlement of her daughter, with which the attentions 
of the saimon-fisher threatened materially to interfere; and 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 137 

there was a total want of sympathy between them besides. 
Even William, though he still retained a sort of rough 
regard for him, had begun to look askance on his intimacy 
with Lillias. His avowed love, too, for the modern gave 
no little offence. The farm of Meikle Farness was obsolete 
enough in its usages and modes of tillage to have formed 
no uninteresting study to the antiquary. Towards autumn, 
when the fields vary most in colour, it resembled a rudely- 
executed chart of some large island, — so irregular were the 
patches which composed it, and so broken on every side 
by a surrounding sea of moor, that here and there went 
winding into the interior in long river-like strips, or ex- 
panded within into friths and lakes. In one corner there 
stood a heap of stones, in another a thicket of furze ; here 
a piece of bog ; there a broken bank of clay. The imple- 
ments with which the old man laboured in his fields were 
as primitive in their appearance as the fields themselves : 
there was the one-stilted plough, the wooden-toothed harrow, 
and the basket-woven cart, with its rollers of wood. With 
these, too, there was the usual misproportion on the farm, 
to its extent, of lean, inefficient cattle, four half-starved 
animals performing with incredible effort the w r ork of one. 
Thomson would fain have induced the old man, who was 
evidently sinking in the world, to have recourse to a better 
system, but he gained wondrous little by his advice. And 
there was another cause which operated still more decidedly 
against him. A wealthy young farmer in the neighbour- 
hood had been for the last few months not a little diligent 
in his attentions to Lillias. He had lent the old man, at 
the preceding term, a considerable sum of money ; and had 



138 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

ingratiated himself with the stepmother, by chiming in on 
all occasions with her humour, and by a present or two 
besides. Under the auspices of both parents, therefore, 
he had now paid his addresses to Lillias ; and, on meet- 
ing with a repulse, had stirred them both up against 
Thomson. 

The fisherman was engaged one evening in fishing his 
nets : the ebb was that of a stream tide ; and the bottom 
of almost the entire bay lay exposed to the light of the 
setting sun, save that a river-like strip of water wound 
through the midst. He had brought his gun with him, in 
the hope of finding a seal or otter asleep on the outer 
banks ; but there were none this evening ; and, laying 
down his piece against one of the poles of the weir, he 
was employed in capturing a fine salmon that went darting 
like a bird from side to side of the inner inclosure, when 
he heard some one hailing him by name from outside the 
nets. He looked up, and saw three men, one of whom 
he recognised as the young farmer who was paying his 
addresses to Lillias, approaching from the opposite side 
of the bay. They were all apparently much in liquor, and 
came staggering towards him in a zig-zag track along the 
sands. A suspicion crossed his mind that he might find 
them other than friendly ; and, coming out of the inclosure, 
where, from the narrowness of the space and the depth of 
the water, he would have lain much at their mercy, he 
employed himself in picking off the patches of sea-weed 
that adhered to the nets, when they came up to him, and 
assailed him with a torrent of threats and reproaches. He 
pursued his occupation with the utmost coolness, turning 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 139 

round, from time to time, to repay their abuse by some 
cutting repartee. His assailants discovered they were to 
gain little in this sort of contest ; and Thomson found, in 
turn, that they were much less disguised in liquor than 
he had at first supposed, or than they seemed desirous to 
make it appear. In reply to one of his more cutting 
sarcasms, the tallest of the three, a ruffian-looking fellow, 
leaped forward and struck him on the face; and in a 
moment he had returned the blow with such hearty good- 
will, that the fellow was dashed against one of the poles. 
The other two rushed in to close with him. He seized his 
gun, and, springing out from beside the nets to the open 
bank, dealt the farmer with the butt-end a tremendous blow 
on the face, which prostrated him in an instant • and then, 
cocking the piece and presenting it, he commanded the 
other two, on peril of their lives, to stand aloof. Odds of 
weapons, when there is courage to avail one's-self of them, 
forms a thorough counterbalance to odds of number. 
After an engagement of a brief half-minute, Thomson's 
assailants left him in quiet possession of the field ; and he 
found, on his way home, that he could trace their route by 
the blood of the young farmer. There went abroad an 
exaggerated and very erroneous edition of the story, highly 
unfavourable to the salmon-fisher; and he received an 
intimation shortly after that his visits at the farm-house 
were no longer expected. But the intimation came not 
from Lillias. 

The second year of his speculation had w r ell-nigh come 
to a close, and, in calculating on the quantum of his ship- 
ments and the state of the markets, he could deem it a 



Ho TALES AND SKETCHES. 

more successful one than even the first. But his agent 
seemed to be assuming a new and worse character: he 
either substituted promises and apologies for his usual 
remittances, or neglected writing altogether; and as the 
fisherman was employed one day in dismantling his weirs 
for the season, his worst fears were realised by the as- 
tounding intelligence that the embarrassments of the 
merchant had at length terminated in a final suspension 
of payments ! 

" There/'' said he, with a coolness which partook in its 
nature in no slight degree of that insensibility of pain and 
injury which follows a violent blow, — " there go well-nigh 
all my hard-earned savings of twelve years, and all my 
hopes of happiness with Lillias !" He gathered up his 
utensils with an automaton-like carefulness, and throwing 
them over his shoulders, struck across the sands in the 
direction of the cottage. " I must see her," he said, " once 
more, and bid her farewell." His heart swelled to his 
throat at the thought ; but, as if ashamed of his weakness, 
he struck his foot firmly against the sand, and, proudly 
raising himself to his full height, quickened his pace. He 
reached the door, and, looking wistfully, as he raised the 
latch, in the direction of the farm-house, his eye caught 
a female figure coming towards the cottage through the 
bushes of the ravine. " Tis poor Lillias ! " he exclaimed. 
" Can she already have heard that I am unfortunate, 
and that we must part?" He went up to her, and, as 
he pressed her hand between both his, she burst into 
tears. 

It was a sad meeting. Meetings must ever be such 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 141 

when the parties that compose them bring each a separate 
grief, which becomes common when imparted. 

" I cannot tell you," said Lillias to her lover, " how 
unhappy I am. My stepmother has not much love to 
bestow on any one ; and so. though it be in her power to 
deprive me of the quiet I value so much, I care compara- 
tively little for her resentment. Why should I? She is 
interested in no one but herself. As for Simpson, I can 
despise without hating him : wasps sting just because it is 
their nature; and some people seem born, in the same way, 
to be mean-spirited and despicable. But my poor father, who 
has been so kind to me, and who has so much heart about 
him — his displeasure has the bitterness of death to me. And 
then he is so wildly and unjustly angry with you. Simpson 
has got him, by some means, into his power,-— I know not 
how : my stepmother annoys him continually ; and from 
the state of irritation in which he is kept, he is saying and 
doing the most violent things imaginable, and making me 
so unhappy by his threats." And she again burst into 
tears. 

Thomson had but little of comfort to impart to her. 
Indeed, he could afterwards wonder at the indifference with 
which he beheld her tears, and the coolness with which he 
communicated to her the story of his disaster. But he had 
not yet recovered his natural tone of feeling. Who has not 
observed that, while in men of an inferior and weaker cast, 
any sudden and overwhelming misfortune unsettles their 
whole minds, and all is storm and uproar, — in minds of a 
superior order, when subjected to the same ordeal, there 
takes place a kind of freezing, hardening process, under 



142 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

which they maintain at least apparent coolness and self- 
possession? Grief acts as a powerful solvent to the one 
class, — to the other it is as the waters of a petrifying 
spring. 

"Alas, my Lillias!" said the fisherman, "we have not 
been born for happiness and each other. We must part, — 
each of us to struggle with our respective evils. Call up all 
your strength of mind, — the much in your character that 
has as yet lain unemployed, — and so despicable a thing as 
Simpson will not dare to annoy you. You may yet meet 
with a man worthy of you ; some one who will love you as 
well as — as one who can at least appreciate your value, 
and who will deserve you better." As he spoke, and his 
mistress listened in silence and in tears, William Stewart 
burst in upon them through the bushes ; and, with a coun- 
tenance flushed, and a frame tremulous with passion, 
assailed the fisherman with a torrent of threats and re- 
proaches. He even raised his hand. The prudence of 
Thomson gave way under the provocation. Ere the blow 
had descended, he had locked the farmer in his grasp, 
and, with an exertion of strength which scarcely a giant 
would be capable of in a moment of less excitement, he 
raised him from the earth, and forced him against the 
grassy side of the ravine, where he held him despite of his 
efforts. A shriek from Lillias recalled him to the command 
of himself. " William Stewart/' he said, quitting his hold 
and stepping back, "you are an old man, and the father of 
Lillias." The farmer rose slowly and collectedly, with a 
flushed cheek but a quiet eye, as if all his anger had 
evaporated in the struggle, and, turning to his daughter — 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 143 

" Come, Lillias, my lassie," he said, laying hold of her 
arm, " I have been too hasty, — I have been in the wrong." 
And so they parted. 

Winter came on, and Thomson was again left to the 
solitude of his cottage, with only his books and his own 
thoughts to employ him. He found little amusement or 
comfort in either : he could think of only Lillias, that she 
loved and was yet lost to him. 

" Generous, and affectionate, and confiding," he has said, 
when thinking of her ; " I know she would willingly share 
with me in my poverty ; but ill would I repay her kindness 
in demanding of her such a sacrifice. Besides, how could 
I endure to see her subjected to the privations of a destiny 
so humble as mine ? The same Heaven that seems to have 
ordained me to labour, and to be unsuccessful, has given 
me a mind not to be broken by either toil or disappoint- 
ment; but keenly and bitterly would I feel the evils of both 
were she to be equally exposed. I must strive to forget 
her, or think of her only as my friend." And, indulging 
in such thoughts as these, and repeating and re-repeating 
similar resolutions, — only, however, to find them unavail- 
ing, — winter, with its long, dreary nights, and its days 
of languor and inactivity, passed heavily away. But it 
passed. 

He was sitting beside his fire one evening late in Feb- 
ruary when a gentle knock was heard at the door. He 
started up, and, drawing back the bar, William Stewart 
entered the apartment. 

" Allan," said the old man, M I have come to have some 
conversation with you, and would have come sooner, but 



144 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

pride and shame kept me back. I fear I have been much 
to blame." 

Thomson motioned him to a seat, and sat down beside 
him. 

" Farmer/' he said, " since we cannot recall the past, we 
had perhaps better forget it." 

The old man bent forward his head till it rested al- 
most on his knee, and for a few moments remained 
silent. 

" I fear, Allan, I have been much to blame/' he at length 
reiterated. " Ye maun come an' see Lillias. She is ill, 
very ill, an', I fear, no very like to get better." Thomson 
was stunned by the intelligence, and answered he scarcely 
knew what. " She has never been richt herseP," continued 
the old man, " sin' the unlucky day when you an' I met in 
the burn here, but for the last month she has been little out 
o' her bed. Since mornin' there has been a great change 
on her, an' she wishes to see you. I fear we havena meikle 
time to spare, an' had better gang." Thomson followed 
him in silence. 

They reached the farm-house of Meikle Farness, and en- 
tered the chamber where the maiden lay. A bright fire of 
brushwood threw a flickering gloom on the floor and rafters, 
and their shadows, as they advanced, seemed dancing on 
the walls. Close beside the bed there was a small table 
bearing a lighted candle, and with a Bible lying open upon 
it, at that chapter of Corinthians in which the apostle 
assures us that the dead shall rise and the mortal put on 
immortality. Lillias half-sat, half-reclined, in the upper 
part of the bed. Her thin and wasted features had already 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 145 

the stiff rigidity of death \ her cheeks and lips were colour- 
less ; and, though the blaze seemed to dance and flicker on 
her half-closed eyes, they served no longer to intimate to 
the departing spirit the existence of external things. 

"Ah, my Lillias \" exclaimed Thomson, as he bent over 
her, his heart swelling with an intense agony. " Alas ! has 
it come to this I" 

His well-known voice served to recall her as from the 
precincts of another world. A faint melancholy smile passed 
over her features, and she held out her hand. 

" I was afraid," she said, in a voice sweet and gentle as 
ever, though scarcely audible through extreme weakness, 
— " I was afraid that I was never to see you more. Draw 
nearer; there is a darkness coming over me, and I hear 
but imperfectly. I may now say with a propriety which no 
one will challenge what I durst not have said before. Need 
I tell you that you were the dearest of all my friends, — the 
only man I ever loved, — the man whose lot, however low 
and unprosperous, I would have deemed it a happiness to 
be invited to share ? I do not, however, I cannot, reproach 
you. I depart, and for ever; but, oh! let not a single 
thought of me render you- unhappy. My few years of life 
have not been without their pleasures, and I go to a better 
and brighter world. I am weak, and cannot say more, but 
let me hear you speak. Read to me the eighth chapter of 
Romans/' 

Thomson, with a voice tremulous and faltering through 
emotion, read the chapter. Ere he had made an end, the 
maiden had again sunk into the state of apparent insensi- 
bility out of which she had been so lately awakened ; though 



146 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

occasionally a faint pressure of his hand, which she still 
retained, showed him that she was not unconscious of his 
presence. At length, however, there was a total relaxation 
of the grasp ; the cold damp of the stiffening palm struck 
a chill to his heart ; there was a fluttering of the pulse, a 
glazing of the eye ; the breast ceased to heave, the heart to 
beat ; the silver cord parted in twain, and the golden bowl 
was broken. Thomson contemplated for a moment the 
body of his mistress, and, striking his hand against his fore- 
head, rushed out of the apartment. 

He attended her funeral; he heard the earth falling 
heavy and hollow on the coffin-lid ; he saw the green sod 
placed over her grave ; he witnessed the irrepressible 
anguish of her father, and the sad regret of her friends ; 
and all this without shedding a tear. He was turning to 
depart, when some one thrust a letter into his hand : he 
opened it almost mechanically. It contained a consider- 
able sum of money, and a few lines from his agent, stating 
that, in consequence of a favourable change in his circum- 
stances, he had been enabled to satisfy all his creditors. 
Thomson crumpled up the bills in his hand. He felt as if 
his heart stood still in his breast; a noise seemed ringing 
in his ears ; a mist-cloud appeared, as if rising out of the 
earth, and darkening around him. He was caught, when 
falling, by old William Stewart ; and, on awakening to con- 
sciousness and the memory of the past, found himself in his 
arms. He lived for about ten years after, a laborious and 
speculative man, ready to oblige, and successful in all his 
designs; and no one deemed him unhappy. It was ob- 
served, however, that his dark-brown hair was soon mingled 



THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 147 

with masses of gray, and that his tread became heavy and 
his frame bent. It was remarked, too, that when attacked 
by a lingering epidemic, which passed over well-nigh the 
whole country, he of all the people was the only one <hat 
sank under it. 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING 
FISHERY. 

i. 

To the Editor of the " Inverness Courier? 

Sir, — I sit down to execute my intention of writing for you 
notices of the manner in which the herring fishery is prose- 
cuted in the Moray Frith, and its traditional history for the 
last hundred years, as connected with the port of Cromarty. 
My materials I have drawn from a variety of sources. What 
I owe to tradition, though brief and imperfect, like all his- 
tory drawn from the same source, is curious, and may prove 
amusing ; what I have derived from testimony and experi- 
ence, may interest the general reader, and add to the 
number and distinctness of the ideas which associate in his 
mind with that of a herring fishery. 

James VI. attempted to civilise the Highlands and Isles, 
by colonising them with people brought from the southern 
counties of the kingdom; and his first experiment, says 
Robertson, was made in the Isle of Lewis, where, as the 
station was conveniently situated for prosecuting the fishing 
trade, he settled a colony brought from the shores of Fife. 
The historian adds further, that the project miscarried in 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY, 149 

this instance, through the jealousy of the islanders, who 
were alike unwilling to forsake their old habits, or to acquire 
new ; and that it was altogether abandoned on the acces- 
sion of James to the throne of England. That Cromarty 
was originally peopled by some such colony appears, at the 
least, probable from the following circumstances. The sur- 
names of the oldest families in it are peculiar to the southern 
counties of Scotland ; and the Gaelic language, though that 
of the adjacent country, was scarcely known in it prior to 
the erection of its hemp manufactory. Perhaps from the 
peculiar character of the inhabitants, an argument might be 
drawn in support of this hypothesis. The distinguishing 
trait in that of the Highland population of Scotland is a 
species of Toryism which connects the lower to the higher 
classes, and proves that the attachments of the feudal 
system may survive long after its forms are abolished. In 
Cromarty there is none of this ; on the contrary, two-thirds 
of the people are marked by the unyielding independent 
Whiggism of the English and Lowland Scotch. 

But from hypothesis I escape to matter of fact. At the 
close of the seventeenth century, and early in the eighteenth, 
the herring fishery of Cromarty was very successful; and 
the era of the Union is still spoken of as the time of the 
" herring drove." Old men have heard their fathers speak 
of having seen the shores covered with heaps of fish, and 
nearly the whole inhabitants of the town, from old age to 
infancy, employed in curing them. They were caught in 
the common manner ; but shortly after the Union an im- 
mense shoal of herrings were thrown or rather ran them- 
selves ashore in a little bay to the east of the town. The 



ISO TALES AND SKETCHES. 

beach was covered with them to the depth of several feet ; 
and salt and cask failed the packers when comparatively 
only an inconsiderable part of the shoal was cured. The 
residue was carried away for manure by the farmers in the 
neighbourhood ; and so great was the quantity used in this 
way, and the stench they caused so offensive, that it was 
feared disease would have ensued. 

About thirty years ago, some masons, in digging a foun- 
dation in the eastern extremity of the town, discovered the 
site of a packing yard of this period, and threw out a quan- 
tity of scales which glittered as bright as if they had been 
stripped from the fish only a few weeks before. Near this 
place, in the memory of men still living, there stood a little 
square building two stories in height, and with only a single 
room on each floor. The lower was dark and damp, and 
had the appearance of a cellar or storehouse ; the upper was 
lighted on three sides, and finished in a manner that showed 
both the wealth and taste of the builder. A rich stucco 
cornice divided the walls from the ceiling. The former 
Were neatly panelled ; the centre of the latter was occupied 
by a massy circular patras, round which a shoal of herrings, 
exquisitely relieved, were swimming in a sea of plaster. 
This building, which, according to tradition, had been the 
cellar and counting-room of a rich herring merchant, long 
survived the cause of its erection. After a busy and suc- 
cessful fishing, the shoal, as usual, left the frith in a single 
night. Preparations were made for the ensuing season ; 
the season came, but not the herrings ; and for more than 
half a century from this time Cromarty derived scarcely any 
benefit from its herring fishing. 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 151 

During the era of the "herring drove" Cromarty was 
a place of considerable commercial importance. I have 
heard from old men, that at the beginning of the last cen- 
tury not less than five three-masted vessels belonged to it, 
besides others of lesser size. Like many of the trading 
towns of Scotland, it suffered from the Union, and the 
failure of the herring fishing completed its ruin. It fell so 
low before the year 1730, that a single shopkeeper- — who 
was not such literally, for in the summer season he travelled 
the country as a pedlar — more than supplied the inhabitants. 
It is a singular fact, that the tide now flows twice every 
twenty-four hours over the spot once occupied by his shop. 

Those acquainted with the natural history of the herring, 
know that it is not uncommon for it to desert on the 
sudden its accustomed haunts. The instance related, how- 
ever, happened in an age when almost every extraordinary 
effect was coupled with a supernatural cause ; and two 
stories relating to it survive, which show that our fore- 
fathers were strangely ingenious in rendering a reason, and 
not a little credulous in forming a belief. 

Great quantities of fish had been caught and brought 
ashore on a Saturday. The packers continued to work 
during the night, yet on the Sunday morning much re- 
mained to be done : and as from the sultriness of the 
weather, and the fish becoming soft, the work was evidently 
one of necessity, the minister of the parish did not hinder 
them from going on with it throughout the Sabbath. To- 
wards evening he paid them a visit ; and as they were pre- 
vented from attending church he made them a short serious 
address. They soon, however, became impatient ; the dili- 



152 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

gent began to work, the mischievous to pelt him with filth, 
and the good man abruptly concluded his exhortation by- 
praying that the besom of judgment would come and sweep 
every herring out of the frith. This prayer, as the story 
goes, was more than answered. On the Monday following 
the boats went to sea as usual, but returned empty. On 
the Tuesday they were not more successful, and it was 
concluded that the shoal had gone off for the season. It 
proved, however, not for the season merely, for another 
and another came and still no herrings were caught. In 
short, for the sixty succeeding years Cromarty was without 
a herring fishery. 

The other is still a wilder story than this, and accounts 
for what is termed the flight of the drove in a different 
manner. Tradition, who is even a worse naturalist than 
historian, affirms that herrings have a strong antipathy to 
human blood, especially when spilt in a quarrel. On the 
last day of the fishing the nets belonging to two boats be- 
came entangled ; the crew that first hauled applied the 
knife to their neighbours baulks and meshes, and with little 
trouble or damage to themselves, succeeded in unravelling 
their own. A quarrel was the consequence ; and one of 
the ancient modes of naval warfare, the only one eligible 
in their circumstances, was resorted to. They fought lean- 
ing over the gunwales of their respective boats. Blood was 
spilt, unfortunately spilt, in the sea ; the affronted herrings 
took their departure, and for more than half a century were 
not the cause, even in the remotest degree, of any quarrel 
which took place in the Moray Frith or its shores. One of 
the combatants, who distinguished himself either by doing 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 153 

or suffering in this unlucky fray, bore ever after the desig- 
nation of " the bloody;" and there are men still living who 
remember to have seen him. 

Cromarty, as I have stated, after the failure of its herring 
fishery, dwindled into a place of no importance ; and its 
excellent harbour, which, as an old black letter folio states, 
was so early as the sixteenth century " callit by Scottish 
folks the haill (health) of seamen," proved of value only to 
a few half employed fishermen, or to the voyager driven 
from his course by tempest. This change materially affected 
the character of the inhabitants. Travellers have written 
of the external desolations of cities, the streams of whose 
commerce had either dried up or shifted into other chan- 
nels, but their descriptions are of externals only. They say 
little of the change effected by vicissitudes so trying on the 
character of men. Should I, sir, occupy a part of this 
column in detailing the effects of the change related on the 
manners and habits of my townsmen, the digression would 
perhaps be forgiven me. The subject may prove interest- 
ing to your readers when they reflect that human nature is 
the same in cities as in villages, and that the same causes 
produce always the same effects. 

Unsuccessful exertion is naturally succeeded by inert 
apathy, a mood the most unfavourable both to learning 
and the arts. During the era of the herring drove, strange 
as it may seem, there were fishermen in Cromarty who 
were no contemptible scholars. There is a tradition that 
one of the Urquharts of that time, when sauntering along 
the shore, accompanied by two guests, gentlemen from 
England, asked a fisherman he met several questions in 



154 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

Latin, and to the surprise of the visitors received prompt 
answers in the same language. In the age which succeeded, 
education among this class was entirely neglected. Nothing 
can give a stronger conception of their nerveless apathy, 
than the fact that children of the men who, their rank in 
life considered, were both learned and intelligent, scarcely 
knew that the world extended more than a thousand miles 
round the place of their nativity. I have heard singular 
stories of two fishermen who lived in this era of indolence 
and apathy, and mention them from the circumstance of 
their having been strongly marked with those traits of char- 
acter which were peculiar in the place to men of their pro- 
fession in that age, — a gross ignorance on the subjects of 
general information, and a sagacity singularly acute when 
expatiating within a certain limited circle. Though inhabit- 
ants of a seaport town, they believed that at the distance 
of a few weeks' sailing, the ocean was bounded by the hori- 
zon, and that all beyond was darkness ; but though thus 
ignorant, not Virgil himself was better acquainted with the 
signs of the weather, or could tell more truly when storms 
or calms might be expected. Facts of this kind, and such 
are largely supplied by the notices of savage tribes given by 
travellers, furnish data from whence it may be inferred, that 
the nearer men approach to a state of nature the closer do 
their reasoning powers resemble in strength and narrowness 
of scope the instincts of animals. 

It has been remarked, that striking anomalies occur no- 
where more frequently than among simple half-civilised 
people. When the general powers of one class of my 
townsmen were drawn to a focus extremely narrow but 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 155 

proportionally intense, the mechanical abilities of another 
expatiated in a wider sphere than formerly. Tradesmen, 
when the place was a scene of business, were regularly 
engaged in their several professions, but on the change 
detailed, their employment became partial, and their gains 
consequently small. In the time thus thrown in their dis- 
posal, and which their necessities would not suffer to remain 
altogether unoccupied, they applied to arts different from 
those they professed, and supplied themselves with articles 
of common use, which they formerly were in the custom of 
purchasing. Men who, during the era of the " herring 
drove " confined their labours to one profession, were some 
years after its failure partially skilled in perhaps half a 
dozen • though what they gained in the mass they lost in 
the detail. It is generally acknowledged that a proper 
division of labour is one of the surest tests of a flourishing 
state ; and it may not appear too paradoxical to affirm that 
men become more generally ingenious in proportion as the 
arts decay. 

A simple eccentricity of character, which nearly levelled 
the man with the child, was another effect produced by the 
change. A regular and profitable employment is of itself 
amusement ; but in proportion as men have little to engage 
them, they become unwilling to labour, and learn to draw 
a broad line between employment and diversion. It proved 
thus with my townsmen ; they sought in amusements little 
different from those of children, resources from the tcedium 
of vacuity, and the habit thus acquired had on their general 
character the effect described. The other effects were less 
marked. A change of the kind has generally ill conse- 



156 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

quences on the morals of men ; none, however, took place 
in this instance, which was, perhaps, owing in part to that 
regard of men's opinions which is so strong a principle in 
the inhabitants of villages, where each is known personally 
to the others, and in part, perhaps, to the clergyman of the 
period, who was an excellent and judicious man. 

The domestic economy of the people at this age is 
deserving of notice. Their clothing they manufactured 
themselves. Every half-dozen neighbours had a boat, and 
every family a strip of land. The latter supplied them with 
bread, and by the former they supplied themselves with 
fish. At midsummer, when cod, ling, mackerel, &c, are 
to be caught near the shore, it was customary for them to 
sail to Tarbet Ness, an excellent fishing station, twenty miles 
north of Cromarty, and stay there for several weeks, laying 
up store for winter. The day was occupied in fishing ; at 
night they moored their boats and converted the sails into 
tents. In autumn the more enterprising among them 
formed parties, and scoured the frith in quest of herrings. 
During the time of the " drove," a premium of twenty 
pounds Scots was awarded every season to the boat's crew 
who caught the first barrel of fish. This premium (I have 
not learned from what quarter it came) was afterwards much 
more the object of the fishermen than the herrings them- 
selves j but it was not every season they caught enough to 
entitle them to it. The grandfather of the writer, a man 
who witnessed the smoke of Culloden from the hill of 
Cromarty, and who in his eighty-fifth year possessed all his 
faculties bodily and mental, frequently made one of these 
parties. I have often, when a child, stood by his knee, 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 157 

listening with intense interest to his minute characteristic 
details of men and times, which were unknown almost to 
every other. From his narratives, and the knowledge I 
have acquired of the character of the present age, I find 
data to conclude, that in the last ninety years there has 
been a change in the manners and habits of the inhabitants 
of this part of the country, greater beyond comparison, than 
any other that has taken place among them since the era 
of the Reformation. The men of the present age in the 
north of Scotland are much more unlike their predecessors 
of the reign of Queen Anne, and George L, than the latter 
were to the people who lived there three hundred year s 
before. To give a detail of the signs of this change, to 
examine into the various causes which effected it, and to 
consider and balance its advantages and disadvantages, 
physical and moral, would be a work of interest, and, as the 
subject now presents itself to me, one not of great difficulty. 
— I am, sir, your obedient servant, M. 



II. 

To the Editor of the "Inverness Courier." 

Sir, — Dr Currie, the elegant and philosophical biographer 
of Burns, has remarked that knowledge, which some have 
defined to be power, and others happiness, may with safety 
be considered as motion. He has said that it raises men 
to an eminence from whence they take within the sphere of 
their vision a large portion of the globe, and discover 



158 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

advantage at a great distance on its surface. My townsmen 
of the age which succeeded that of Queen Anne did not 
occupy an eminence of this kind, and they were far from 
enterprising. At length, however, they were roused by 
flattering accounts of the herring fishery of Caithness, and, 
nearly eighty years ago, a fleet of boats, manned by 
mechanics and fishermen, left the bay of Cromarty for that 
of Wick. The venture was esteemed one of considerable 
hazard ; but what, Mr Editor, would those who thought so 
have said of some enterprises of the present day? In the 
year 1826, a fleet of boats, belonging to St Ives in Corn- 
wall, prosecuted the herring fishing on this coast — the in- 
telligent and adventurous fishermen having seen from the 
Land's End the appearance of advantage at John O'Groat's. 
For the first few years, the fishing was pursued with 
tolerable success ; and the men prosecuted it as regularly 
on the coast of Caithness as they had formerly done in the 
Moray Frith. A run of ill seasons, however, disheartened 
them. At length, only a single boat left the frith for Wick. 
Her crew were even less fortunate this year than the fisher- 
men who remained unemployed at home ; for when riding 
at her nets she was overtaken by a terrible tempest and 
driven to the coast of Norway. The circumstances of this 
storm were indelibly imprinted on the memories of the 
crew ; and I have heard it described at the distance of 
sixty years from the time it happened, in almost the 
language of poetry. The night set in shortly after the 
boat was driven from her nets, and became so extremely 
dark, that, for the heavens and sea, nothing was to be seen 
but a thick pitchy cloud. The howl of the waves and wind 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 159 

was so terribly loud as to prevent the crew from exchanging 
a single word. At times they descried, through the dark- 
ness and nearly above the gunwale, an indistinct form, 
resembling a white sheet, flapping to the wind — an appear- 
ance they could not explain ; and occasionally a flash of 
lightning discovered the face of the ocean lashed into the 
whiteness of snow. They had left the land in company 
with another boat, and saw her driven from her nets at the 
same time with themselves. Her crew, instead of hoisting 
some of the sail, timorously lowered the foremast; she 
became, in consequence, quite unmanageable, turned her 
side to the waves, and foundered. The men of Cromarty 
were bolder, and their courage was prudence, for the little 
sail they hoisted carried them through the "trough" of the 
sea. In a space of time almost incredibly short, the dis 
tance considered, they were taken up on the coast of Nor- 
way by a British vessel, and restored to their friends. For 
several years afterwards no inhabitant of Cromarty was 
engaged in the herring fishery. 

In the autumn of 1780, a body of herrings was seen 
betwixt the Sutors, swimming up the frith with all the 
accompaniments of a large shoal, whales, porpoises, and 
flocks of sea-gulls. They passed through the roadstead of 
the port and the strait opposite Invergordon, beating the 
water for several miles into a foam, and giving to it the 
appearance it presents when ruffled by those sudden land 
squalls which blacken the surface, but die away before they 
furrow it into waves. The shoal took up its spawning 
ground opposite Ardilly, a villa within three miles of Ding- 
wall, and was fished in immense quantities within four 



160 TALES AND SKETCHES, 

hundred yards of the shore. On the following season a 
similar body passed the points of Ardersier and Rosemarkie, 
rested for some time in the bays of Fortrose and Campbel- 
town, and then turned down the frith. Before they went 
off, however, such quantities were caught that, for lack of 
casks, the pits of an old tanyard were cleared out and 
packed with herrings. 

Shoals of herrings were occasionally seen in the Moray 
Frith during the last forty years ; but for the first twenty of 
these, as almost all the fishermen were at Caithness, few 
were caught. I have heard one season, early in this period, 
spoken of as very remarkable, from the quantity of fish on 
the coast. One day in particular, in the beginning of 
autumn, the bay of Cromarty presented a scene not easy 
to be forgotten. The appearance was as if its countless 
waves were embodied into fish and birds. No fewer than 
seven whales, some of them apparently sixty feet in length, 
were seen within the short space of half a mile. When 
they spouted, the jet seemed in the rays of a noonday sun 
as if speckled with silver, an appearance given by shoals of 
garvies (a smooth-coated pretty little fish) which they drew 
in with the water, and thus ejected. Some of the birds 
that flocked round them to pick up the small fry which were 
stranded on their backs, were hurried aloft in the jet, like 
chaff or feathers in an eddy, to the height of thirty or forty 
feet. The water round them bubbled like a caldron. 
There were in the immense heterogeneous mass through 
which they swam, herrings, mackerel, sand-eels, garvies, 
cod, porpoises, and seals. 

The fishermen commonly returned from Caithness early 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 161 

in September. For several years together, when sailing 
through the upper part of the frith, they saw immense 
bodies of herrings, and concluded that the shoal had begun 
to make their coast a regular annual visit, as in the reign 
of Queen Anne. Some of the more enterprising began to 
fish ; and boats, whose Caithness fishery in six weeks only 
averaged from sixty to eighty crans, in the course of a 
single week brought ashore from the Moray Frith above a 
hundred. But their encouragement was rather in what they 
caught than from what they sold. There was none in this 
part of the country at the time who exported herrings ; the 
inhabitants were soon supplied ; and the fishermen sailed 
in quest of purchasers to every town and village on both 
sides the frith, within forty miles of Cromarty. Herrings 
caught nearly betwixt the Sutors were sold at the same 
time in the streets of Dornoch and Elgin. The want of 
merchants at this period frequently put an end to the fishing 
when the shoal yet remained on the spawning ground, and 
could have been caught by each boat at the rate of thirty 
crans per day. 

There is a story of this time, which, from the mixture it 
contains of the marvellous, rivals those of a former age. A 
Cromarty boat had gone to the fishing. The night, which 
was dark and foggy, set in before she arrived at the ground. 
"When adjusting the fishing tackle, the crew were startled by 
a low frightful sound which rose from the sea, and seemed 
as if made by some animal in the act of choking. It 
became more mixed and louder. " Some of the boats have 
foundered," exclaimed one of the crew; " to your oars ! let 
us render what assistance we can/' The tackle was imme- 

L 



162 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

diately thrown aside, and the thwarts manned ; but from the 
extreme darkness of the night, the boatmen were in doubt 
which way to proceed. At the moment they were bending 
to the first stroke of the oar, a dark cloud appeared a-head. 
It was a boat under full sail, bearing down right on their 
larboard. The cry of "bear off!" had scarcely escaped 
them, when a tremendous crash told that the warning had 
been given too late. Their larboard bow was laid open to 
within three planks of the keel ; the water rushed in ; and 
the boat which had occasioned the disaster, instead of lay- 
ing too, swept by with the velocity of an arrow. The man 
who went a-head to discover the extent of the injury,, was 
almost petrified on seeing a gap extending from the gun- 
wale to the surface of the water, and on hearing every little 
wave as it struck the bows toppling over. The presence of 
mind displayed by the crew was admirable. They rushed 
in a body to the stern ; the bows rose out of the sea ; a 
single man was sent a-head to bring aft the ballast, and to 
fill up the breach with the sail. The stem was then turned 
towards the shore, and the oars resumed. They had rowed 
but a little way when a blue flickering light sprung up, 
scarcely a hundred yards behind, and moved after in their 
wake, neither gaining nor losing of the first distance. " It 
is our death signal," said one of the crew, " I will strive no 
longer." " You may think of it what you will," replied an- 
other, " I, for my part, will consider it the omen of good." 
The confidence of this opinion was one cause of its proving 
such ; for the fishermen doubled their exertions, and on the 
following morning had their boat drawn up on the beach, 
below the town of Cromarty, with two-thirds of the inhabit- 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 163 

ants collected round them, admiring their singular narrative 
and wonderful escape. The incident, however marvellous 
it may appear, was extensively believed. 

In the year 18 16, a few individuals, encouraged by 
• accounts of the great bodies of fish in the frith, and by 
favourable reports of the London and Irish markets, em- 
ployed coopers and procured salt for the curing of herrings 
for exportation, and a number of fishermen were thus in- 
duced to prosecute the fishing in the frith, instead of going 
to Caithness. Early in the season the shoals were small 
and detached, and the fishings irregular, but towards its 
close the body united, and took up their spawning ground 
in the bay of Nairn, where immense quantities were caught 
From this bay, for a whole week, the boats as regularly 
brought full cargoes into this port, as if, instead of pursuing 
the precarious employment of catching herrings, they had 
been engaged in some coasting trade. Shortly before the 
shoal, disappeared, the crew of a Cromarty fishing boat, 
when only a few of their nets w r ere hauled, found their gun- 
wale nearly level with the water. Another within hale was 
invited to lade, on condition of the crew returning the nets ; 
and when barely half the drift was taken up, she had sunk 
as low as the first. The Cromarty boat, after unlading, 
returned for the remainder, but the nets had sunk to the 
bottom, and, from their ponderous weight, defied every 
exertion of the crew to weigh them up. A few pieces were 
torn away by main force, and rather more than twenty 
crans of the fish were thus recovered. It was calculated 
that not less than two hundred barrels of herrings were 
masted in this single drift. 



i64 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

A run of excellent fishing seasons succeeded, and the 
vessels of herring merchants, which had formerly taken in 
their cargoes at Caithness, now thronged the port of Cro- 
marty. In the year 1819 a company was formed, which 
prosecuted the fishing trade on a larger scale and bolder 
system of adventure than it had been carried on before. 
This company had stations at almost every seaport in the 
Moray Frith, and engaged nearly all the boats. The terms 
were liberal, and the fishings excellent. For a long series 
of years before, the average quantity of herrings caught on 
the coast of Caithness by each boat did not exceed eighty 
crans. It is little more than twenty years since notice was 
taken in the Inverness Journal of an Avoch boat which was 
so successful as to supply, in the course of one season, a 
Wick curer with a hundred barrels. In 1823, the Moray 
Frith fishings of the boats of this place averaged so high as 
250 barrels, and there were two whose fishings exceeded 
twice that number. In the same year, towards the end of 
the fishing, 1500 crans were brought into Cromarty in one 
day. 

At this time, when the fishing was so successfully pur- 
sued, and with such encouragement from the curers, several 
enterprising individuals, though unacquainted with the sea 
or the haunts of its finny inhabitants, fitted out boats in the 
hope of catching herrings. The speculation, however, was 
rather bold than fortunate, for even zeal and diligence ill 
supply the want of nautical skill. The experienced fisher- 
men regarded the intruders with jealousy, a little mingled 
with contempt ; and when the herrings shifted their ground 
or left the frith, the half comic, half serious charge brought 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 165 

against them was, that they had frightened away the shoal 
by their uncouth manoeuvres and clumsy tackle. A detail 
of the disasters and difficulties encountered by these adven- 
turers in their unwonted employment of catching herrings 
would form an excellent subject for the pen of Mr Gait or 
the Ettrick Shepherd. 

In the autumn of 1827, four Cromarty boys, the eldest 
scarcely sixteen years of age, fitted out a boat, furnished 
themselves with nets, and prosecuted the fishing. They 
were the children of fishermen, and had acquired, in the 
preceding season, some knowledge of the manner in which 
herrings are caught, and the haunts they frequent, but it 
was feared that their experience w T as of a kind rather 
adapted to lead them into danger than extricate them out 
of it. The result, however, proved that, if not very prudent, 
they were very fortunate. The " boys' boat" was to be 
seen as the movement of the shoal directed, either farther 
to sea or nearer the shore than the other fishers deemed it 
advisable to venture themselves or their nets. One evening 
they were to be found courting the wandering shoals near 
the mouth of the Spey ; the following, perhaps, tossed by 
the multitudinous tides of the Dornock Frith. Even during 
the day, when the other fishermen were ashore, either dry- 
ing their nets, or reposing after the fatigues of the preceding 
night, the boys' boat was to be seen laying-too near the 
fishing ground, and towards evening taking up what was 
reckoned the most advantageous station. When the shoal 
left the coast, the venture which last ascertained its de- 
parture w r as made by the boys. In short, after running 
double the risk, and displaying double the diligence of any 



166 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

crew in the frith, they succeeded in bringing ashore an 
average quantity of fish. Their extreme youth, and the 
adventurous spirit of exertion they manifested, made them 
objects of general interest. Stranger fishermen several 
times yielded to them stations which they would have dis- 
puted with others; and once when driven by stress of 
weather into one of the fishing towns of Moray, they were 
treated with great kindness by the inhabitants. 

For the last three seasons, the Moray Frith fishery has 
not been very successful. The quantity caught averages 
considerably lower than the fishings of former years, and 
greater losses have been sustained. Some of the more 
enterprising curers have suffered severely from the fluctua- 
tions of the markets ; and many of the fishermen have been 
nearly ruined by the loss of their nets, or from the scanty 
portion of fish caught proving insufficient to remunerate 
them for the expenses incurred in fitting out their boats. 
The theory and principles of trade are well understood, and 
may explain the losses of the one class ; but from the given 
details it will be seen that the herring is governed by law so 
arbitrary and uncertain that data cannot be afforded from 
whence to assign causes for the disappointments of the 
other. — I am, sir, your obedient servant, M. 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY 167 



III. 

To the Editor of the "Inverness Courier? 

Sir, — The Moray Frith herring fishery commences in the 
middle of July, and the fish commonly leave the coast in 
the end of August, or first of September. For the first few 
weeks the shoals are small and detached, and the fishings 
only average from two to five barrels per boat. Herrings 
are caught at this early stage of the fishing on the coast of 
Moray, nearly opposite the mouth of the Spey ; but they 
swim in no determinate track, — advancing in some seasons 
through the middle of the frith, and in others towards its 
eastern or western shores. As the season advances they 
come up higher, form into larger bodies, and pursue a route 
tolerably certain. At this second stage, the quantity of bar- 
rels caught by each boat averages from eight to fourteen. 
The point at which the shoals unite is a long narrow bank 
which lies in the middle of the frith, nearly opposite the 
bay of Cromarty, and which the fishermen term Guilliam, 
from three little conical hillocks on the northern shore so 
called. . These hillocks are situated near a deep ravine, 
about half a mile south of the little fishing town of Shand- 
wick ; and when boatmen bring them to appear as if rising 
out of the middle of the ravine, and see at the same time 
the Gaelic Chapel of Cromarty in the line of the Inlaw, 
another conical hillock near the southern base of Ben 
Wyvis, they are on the fishing ground. The position of the 



1 68 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

bank is also ascertained by the depth of the water and the 
nature of the bottom. The soundings on the north side 
vary from twelve to eighteen fathoms, on the south from 
twenty-five to thirty, while the depth on the bank does not 
average more than ten fathoms, and the bottom, which on 
the one side is sand and on the other mud, is a hard gravel, 
and in some places a smooth level rock covered with sea- 
weed. The breadth of the ridge does not exceed half a 
mile, but its length is nearly thrice as much. 

None of your readers, Mr Editor, may ever be placed in 
circumstances to benefit by the minuteness of my descrip- 
tion, but a greater quantity of herrings have been caught 
on this bank than upon any other of equal extent on the 
coast of Scotland. There have been repeated instances of 
fishings prosecuted on Guilliam, for the space of a whole 
week, at the average rate of eight hundred barrels per day ; 
and it has become so famous among Moray Frith fisher- 
men, that they are regarded as meaning the same thing 
when they express their wish for a prosperous season, or 
for a week's fishing on Guilliam. It is sufficiently strange 
that several thousand barrels of herrings should be caught 
in the course of a week on a bank whose extent of surface 
does not exceed one-half of a square mile, and still more 
so, that near the close of such a week the fish appear in as 
great a body upon it as they do at the commencement. 
When the herrings make a lodgment on Guilliam, the fish- 
ings are invariably good ; when, after making a short stay 
on it, they proceed farther up the frith, the quantity caught 
is immense, and salt and cask commonly fail the curers 
before the fish leave the coast ; but when, as in the last 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY, 169 

three seasons, the shoal quits the frith before it settles on 
this bank, the fishing is so scanty as scarcely to cover the 
fishermen's expenses in fitting out their boats. This, though 
not generally known, is so well understood by those con- 
cerned that an intelligent fisherman could mark a chart 
of the Moray Frith with cross lines, like the index of a 
thermometer, and affix a statement of what the average 
profit or loss of the respective seasons would prove, in 
which the fish turned and went off at the different places 
marked. 

In some seasons the shoal is larger than in others, and 
the fishings in consequence better; but success depends 
more on the state of the weather than on any other circum- 
stance. When there are steady light breezes from the south 
or west, the shoal continues to advance ; for the herring, 
unlike most other fish, swims against the wind. Rough 
weather, accompanied by squalls from the north and east, 
has a contrary effect. A hard gale from the east, which 
generally brings large shoals of haddocks, whitings, and 
cod upon the coast, has been known to clear the frith of 
the herrings in a single night. 

In the beginning of the season the fish advance towards 
the spawning ground, but proceed so slowly that in five 
weeks, supposing them to move in a direct line, they only 
swim about thirty miles, which may be reckoned the dis- 
tance from that part of the coast of Moray, where they are 
first caught, to Guilliam, where they commonly make their 
final stand. On this bank they generally remain stationary, 
though on some seasons, as has been stated, they proceed 
farther up the frith, and settle as they did a few years since 



170 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

in the bay of Nairn, at the Sutors of Cromarty, beyond the 
point of Invergordon, or in the bays of Campbeltown and 
Rosemarkie. Immediately on their ceasing to advance 
they begin to spawn, and when emptied they turn down 
the frith, and swim with such rapidity as to remove beyond 
the reach of the fishermen in a single night. Their stay on 
the spawning ground varies from four to ten days. 

There is a law against fishing herrings during the day, 
but, like all general laws, it is worse than useless when 
brought to bear against some particular cases ; and about 
five years ago, when put into force by the captain of a king's 
vessel then on the coast, it proved as inimical to the 
interests of the fishing as a hard gale from the east. This 
law is founded on principles sufficiently evident. It is 
known that during the day, so long as the water is clear, 
the fish do not strike ; and it is inferred that, were the shoal 
to find its course blocked up by a barrier of nets, it would 
turn down the frith and seek for spawning ground else- 
where. But this reasoning only applies when the water 
remains clear and the fish active. The herring at spawning 
time, and a few days prior, is in a sickly and almost torpid 
state, and unable to avoid, or indeed, as is supposed, to see 
the nets. The water, too, at this period is darkened by 
the spawn. The fishings made on Guilliam during the day 
are invariably more successful than those of the night ; for 
the fish strike as readily, and the landmarks by which the 
exact position of the bank is ascertained are better seen. 
An adaptation of this law to the true interests of the fishing 
would be desirable. It has been put in force often enough 
to show both the danger of trusting to a priori speculation, 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 171 

and the value of Bacon's fundamental maxim, " Experiment 
is the test of truth and the rule of utility." 

The set of nets employed in fishing by each boat is 
termed a drift; and the number varies from sixteen to 
twenty-six. The length of each is sixteen fathoms, and 
the depth four. The upper edge is bordered by a strong 
rope laced through square perforated pieces of cork, and 
termed the cork-baulk. The lower is bound with a cord 
called the ground-baulk, and furnished with loops for 
sinkers. These baulks, both lower and upper, are about four 
feet longer than the body of the net, and by their ends the 
whole nets of the drift are tied together. At each fasten- 
ing — that is, between every two nets — a buoy is attached. 
The lower baulk, as its name implies, rests upon the bottom. 
The upper runs parallel to it at the height of four fathoms, 
being kept at that elevation, unless made to recline with the 
tide, by the buoyancy of the cork. The buoys, which are 
commonly made of sheep or dog skins inflated with air, 
float on the surface, and the ropes which attach them to the 
nets are made to vary in length according to the depth of 
the water. In Guilliam, where the average depth is ten 
fathoms, the length of buoy rope required is six. 

When a boat arrives at the fishing ground, w 7 hich is first 
ascertained by the bearings of the landmarks, and next by 
the sounding lead, the mast and two of the oars are stowed 
a-head, and a space near the stern is cleared for casting out 
the nets, which lie in a heap at the midships. The oldest 
and worst are first taken up ; the loops in the lower baulk 
are loaded with sinkers of stone, two men are stationed to 
cast them over, and the other two (the crew consists of but 



372 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

four) are employed at the oar. When the first net is shot 
(thrown over) they fasten its ties to those of a second, and 
so on until the whole are cast out. The boat is propelled 
in the meantime across the tide by the men at the oars, 
and when the whole drift is shot it stretches behind them in 
a line of six or eight hundred yards in length. The tie of 
the last net is next brought forward and fixed to the swing- 
rope, a small hawser attached to the stern, and the boat 
rides to her drift as if at anchor. 

The nets are shot immediately after the boat has arrived 
on the fishing ground, and are not hauled unless there be 
sign of fish, until the crew have ascertained that she has 
drifted over the bank. After hauling, they row against the 
tide until they have come up to the line of their first posi- 
tion, and then shoot again. Sometimes, however, the fish 
strike some of the nets thrown out before the whole drift is 
shot, and the crew commence hauling when the last net has 
been only a few minutes in the water. If the quantity 
taken be deemed sufficient for a cargo they make sail for 
port ; if not they shoot a second time. When the shoal is 
stationary the fishermen are first apprised of its coming in 
contact with their nets, by the buoys sinking from the 
weight of the fish. When the wind is high the track of a 
moving shoal is shown by the appearance of the water, 
which, however rough in other places, is of a dead smooth- 
ness over the herrings, and looks as if coated with oil. 
When one of these calm patches crosses the line of the 
drift, the fishermen prepare to haul, and are seldom dis- 
appointed of a fishing. 

In hauling, the crew first untie the swing-rope from the 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 173 

stem, and bring it aft to near the stern. When the first net 
appears it is laid hold of both by the upper and lower 
baulks, brought in over the gunwale, and shaken to divest it 
of the fish, which are cast out of the meshes when alive 
with less difficulty than when dead. They are raised, too, 
from the bottom with much greater ease. A slight pull is 
sufficient to bring to the surface a net charged with live 
herrings, which, if suffered to remain in the water until the 
fish died, would defy the united efforts of the crew to raise 
from the bottom. The cause is easily given. On pulling 
the net the lower thread of the mesh presses against the 
fish entangled, which immediately rises to the surface to 
avoid what it deems an enemy attacking it from beneath. 
It is not uncommon on hauling for a whole net to rise to 
the boat's side, — the unity of impulse in the thousands in- 
closed giving to it the appearance of one huge fish. When 
the herrings are languid and weighty, and the crew unable 
to weigh up the nets, the ties of the net in hand are brought 
a-head and fastened to the stern. The crew then retire to 
the stern, the head rises in the water, and the heave of the 
waves gives the boat a motion which seldom fails of weigh- 
ing up the net. It is next brought aft and hauled like the 
others. 

Loss of nets, the bane of the fisherman, is either occa- 
sioned by sudden storms, foulness of ground, or weight of 
fish. When attacked by sudden tempest, the boatmen, to 
avoid foundering, are compelled to cut the swing-rope and 
suffer the boat to drive. Losses in this way, however, are 
of rare occurrence, compared with those occasioned by 
foulness of ground. 



if4 TALES AND SKETCHES 

The bottom of the Moray Frith is extremely varied and 
irregular. Nearly about the middle there runs a ledge of 
rock from opposite the bay of Cromarty to Tarbet Ness. 
North of this ledge the bottom is sandy and level for several 
miles ; and on the south there is a hollow ravine of great 
depth, to which, in severe winters, the fish remove when 
driven from the shallows by the intense cold. The bottom 
of the dell is covered by a black adhesive mud in which no 
shell-fish can live ; and the fishermen remark, that though 
at the depth of thirty fathoms from the surface it emits 
when brought above water a more disagreeable stench in 
warm than in temperate seasons. To the north-west of this 
hollow, and in the line of the Sutors, a round bare insulated 
rock rises abruptly from the sand beneath, until within a 
few fathoms of the surface. It is called by fishermen the 
Hettely-hommels, a name, well adapted to puzzle the etymolo- 
gist ; and in the spring and summer seasons it is a favourite 
haunt of every fish common on the coast except herrings. 
These deep-water rocks and ledges are only formidable to 
the fishermen ; those that lie nearer the shore are danger- 
ous to mariners. There runs from the point of the northern 
Sutor, nearly half across the mouth of the frith of Cromarty, 
a steep high ridge, termed the shallows ; upon which, though 
always covered with a depth of water sufficient to float the 
largest vessel, boats have foundered in the time of tempest. 
In storms from the north-east I have seen waves fully half a 
mile in length breaking upon this ridge as if it were only 
covered with a few feet of water. Farther to the north, 
and within half a mile of the shore, there is a long rough 
ledge, of which two pinnacles appear above the surface at 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 175 

neap tides. On this ledge, according to tradition, a Danish 
fleet was wrecked, and two sons of the King of Denmark 
drowned. 

The ridges of rock described are dangerous to the nets, 
and yet favourite haunts of the fish. In neap tides, when 
there is little motion in the water, the drifts pass over them 
without damage ; but during a stream tide, when the whole 
frith, from its currents and eddies, rather resembles a huge 
river than an arm of the sea, great losses are sustained. 
The nets warp round the sharp rocks and rough stones, 
and defy the exertions of the crew to raise them up. It is 
not uncommon for a boat to leave port one day in the 
height of a stream tide with an excellent drift, valued at 
from twenty to thirty pounds sterling, and to return on the 
next with only a few ragged fragments. Of late years more 
losses have been sustained in this way on Guilliam than 
formerly ; and the cause assigned is that the ballast brought 
from the shore, and, when the boats meet with fish, thrown 
out on the bank, has roughened the ground, which was at 
first comparatively smooth. 

The profession of the herring fisherman is one of the 
most laborious and most exposed both to hardship and 
danger. From the commencement to the close of the 
fishing, the men who prosecute it only pass two nights of 
each week in bed. In all the others they sleep in open 
boats, with no other covering than the sail. In wet weather 
their hard couch proves peculiarly comfortless, and even in 
the most pleasant it is one upon which few besides them- 
selves could repose. The watchfulness necessary in their 
circumstances becomes so habitual, that during the fishing 



176 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

their slumbers rather resemble those of the watch-dog than 
of men. They start up on the slightest motion or noise, 
cast a hurried glance over the buoys of their drift, ascer- 
tain their position with regard to the fishing bank, or to the 
other boats around, and then fling themselves down again. 
During the height of a stream tide, their occupation is 
doubly harassing. It not unfrequently happens that when 
shooting their drift the nets thrown out are caught by the 
vortices of an eddy, and ravelled together in such a manner 
that hours elapse, those too it may chance the hours of 
midnight, before they can be disentangled. At such sea- 
sons, also, their drifts come in contact with those of other 
boats, and to free them is one of the most laborious em- 
ployments of the fisherman. 

About the middle of the fishing of 1826, the shoal, which 
had remained stationary for several days opposite the frith 
of Dornoch, suddenly disappeared. The fishermen were 
uncertain whether it had turned down or gone up the frith, 
and, with the view of ascertaining this, the boats, which 
had formerly fished together in one huge fleet, were scat- 
tered in every direction. A boat from Cromarty shot her 
nets in the middle of the frith, near the bank which the 
herrings had lately quitted ; no fish were caught, and in the 
morning the crew proposed that they should sail for Burg- 
head, to know whether any of the other boats had been 
more successful, and to learn what was the general opinion 
concerning the state of the fishing. Their progress, how- 
ever, was so impeded by adverse currents and a dead calm 
that the evening was beginning to darken before they 
arrived abreast of the port; and on consultation, it was 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 177 

agreed that, instead of landing, they should turn up the 
frith, and shoot their drift a little below Guilliam. The 
day had been dull and foggy, and, when the night set in, 
there came on a thick unpleasant drizzle, accompanied by 
a low breeze from the west. Eefore they arrived at the 
ground the rain had become very weighty, and the breeze 
had increased into a gale. The drift was shot and the 
sail stretched over the beams, but it was so saturated with 
water as to afford scarcely any shelter. Soon after mid- 
night the rain ceased, but the gale had risen into a hurri- 
cane, and the sea around them presented to the view the 
appearance of a field of snow agitated by a whirlwind. On 
a sudden the waves began to roll by in silence and without 
breaking. One of the crew started up to ascertain the 
cause of the phenomenon, and immediately exclaimed, 
" We are in the middle of the largest shoal I ever saw in 
the Moray Frith, and shall lose our whole drift ! " The 
others upon this came from under the sail, and, by the 
dim light of an August morning, they saw their buoys 
sinking, one after one, as the fish struck the nets and 
dragged them to the bottom. They commenced hauling, 
but the heave of the sea, which was terrific, compelled 
them to desist, and they sat in the stern shuddering with 
cold, for their clothes were soaked through with the pre- 
vious rain, waiting until the gale would " take off." They 
had had so little expectation of falling in with the shoal 
that several of their best nets, contrary to custom, were 
first cast out, and were now at that extremity of the line 
farthest from the boat. The gale continued in unabated 
strength until late in the morning, when it began to lower, 

M 



178 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

and the fishermen to haul, but they soon found that they 
could scarcely bring ashore one-fourth of the herrings 
" masted." Signals were made to a stranger boat, which 
they descried a little distance off, to come and load, but 
no notice was taken of the invitation. The stranger had 
carried away her mast at the commencement of the gale, 
and the crew, nearly exhausted with the fatigues of the 
preceding night, were tugging at the oar. Necessity is the 
mother of invention. After they had hauled and shaken 
a few of the nets, they again fixed the swing-rope, and 
threw overboard several barrels of the fish taken in. An- 
other net was then hauled, and more of the fish thrown 
out. In this manner, taking in and throwing out alter- 
nately, they continued to labour until two o'clock in the 
afternoon, when the whole drift was hauled. They then 
made sail for Cromarty, and carried along with them 
twenty-five barrels of fish, having thrown out nearly thrice 
as much. 

Perhaps, sir, from this narrative your readers may form 
pretty clear conceptions of the peculiar hardships and 
dangers to which herring fishermen are exposed. I listened 
to it a few days ago with an interest which, I am aware, 
my recital of it will be incompetent to awaken in others. 
Common men have the ability of describing, in a manner 
graphic and interesting, the scenes which have been im- 
pressed on their mind by a sense of danger; but this 
ability the common writer, who narrates and describes at 
second-hand, cannot be expected to possess. — I am, sir, 
your obedient servant, M. 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 179 



IV. 

To the Editor of the "Inverness Courier? 

Sir, — In the latter end of August 1819, I went out to the 
fishing then prosecuted on Guilliam in a Cromarty boat. 
The evening was remarkably pleasant. A low breeze from 
the west scarcely ruffled the surface of the frith, which was 
varied in every direction by unequal stripes and patches of 
a dead calmness. The bay of Cromarty, burnished by the 
rays of the declining sun until- it glowed like a sheet of 
molten fire, lay behind, winding in all its beauty beneath 
purple hills and jutting headlands • while before stretched 
the wide extent of the Moray Frith, speckled with fleets of 
boats which had lately left their several ports, and were 
now all sailing in one direction. The point to w T hich they 
were bound w T as the bank of Guilliam, which, seen from 
betwixt the Sutors, seemed to verge on the faint blue line 
of the horizon ; and the fleets which had already arrived on 
it had, to the naked eye, the appearance of a little rough- 
edged cloud resting on the water. As we advanced, this 
cloud of boats grew larger and darker ; and soon after sun- 
set, when the bank was scarcely a mile distant, it assumed 
the appearance of a thick leafless wood covering a low 
brown island. 

The tide, before we left the shore, had risen high on the 
beach, and was now beginning to recede. Aware of this, 
we lowered sail several hundred yards to the south of the 



180 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

fishing ground ; and after determining the point from 
whence the course of the current would drift us direct over 
the bank, we took down the mast, cleared the hinder part 
of the boat, and began to cast out the nets. Before the 
Inlaw appeared in the line of the Gaelic Chapel, (the land- 
mark by which the southernmost extremity of Guilliam is 
ascertained,) the whole drift was thrown overboard and 
made fast to the swing. Night came on. The sky assumed 
a dead and leaden hue. A low dull mist roughened the out- 
line of the distant hills, and in some places blotted them out 
from the landscape. The faint breeze that had hitherto 
scarcely been felt now roughened the water, which was of 
a dark blue colour, approaching to black. The sounds 
which predominated were in unison with the scene. The 
almost measured dash of the waves against the sides of the 
boat and the faint rustle of the breeze were incessant ; 
while the low dull moan of the surf breaking on the distant 
beach, and the short sudden cry of an aquatic fowl of the 
diving species, occasionally mingled with the sweet though 
rather monotonous notes of a Gaelic song. " It's ane 
o' the Gairloch fishermen," said our skipper; "puir folk, 
they 're aye singin' an' thinkin' o' the Hielands." 

Our boat, as the tides were not powerful, drifted slowly 
over the bank. The buoys stretched out from the bows 
in an unbroken line. There was no sign of fish, and the 
boatmen, after spreading the sail over the beams, laid 
themselves down on it. The scene was at the time so new 
to me, and, though of a somewhat melancholy cast, so 
pleasing that I stayed up. A singular appearance attracted 
my notice. " How," said I to one of the boatmen, who a 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 181 

moment before had made me an offer of his greatcoat, — - 
" how do you account for that calm silvery spot on the water, 
which moves at such a rate in the line of our drift ? " He 
started up. A moment after he called on the others to 
rise, and then replied : " That moving speck of calm water 
covers a shoal of herrings. If it advances a hundred yards 
farther in that direction, w r e shall have some employment 
for you." This piece of information made me regard the 
little patch, which, from the light it caught, and the black- 
ness of the surrounding water, seemed a bright opening in 
a dark sky, with considerable interest. It moved onward with 
increased velocity. It came in contact with the line of the 
drift, and three of the buoys immediately sunk. A few 
minutes were suffered to elapse, and we then commenced 
hauling. The two strongest of the crew, as is usual, were 
stationed at the cork, the two others at the ground baulk. 
My assistance, which I readily tendered, was pronounced 
unnecessary, so I hung over the gunwale watching the nets 
as they approached the side of the boat. The three first, 
from the phosphoric light of the water, appeared as if burst- 
ing into flames of a pale green colour. The fourth was 
still brighter, and glittered through the waves while it was 
yet several fathoms away, reminding me of an intensely 
bright sheet of the aurora borealis. As it approached the 
side, the pale green of the phosphoric matter appeared as if 
mingled with large flakes of snow. It contained a body of 
fish. "A white horse ! a white horse !" exclaimed one of 
the men at the cork baulk ; " lend us a haul." I immedi- 
ately sprung aft, laid hold on the rope, and commenced 
hauling. In somewhat less than half an hour we had all 



i82 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

the nets on board, and rather more than twelve barrels of 
herrings. 

The night had now become so dark, that we could 
scarcely discern the boats which lay within gunshot of our 
own j and we had no means of ascertaining the position of 
the bank except by sounding. The lead was cast, and 
soon after the nets shot a second time. The skipper's 
bottle was next produced, and a dram of whisky sent round 
in a tin measure containing nearly a gill. We then folded 
down the sail, which had been rolled up to make way for 
the herrings, and were soon fast asleep. 

Ten years have elapsed since I laid myself down on this 
couch, and I was not then so accustomed to a rough bed 
as I am now, when I can look back on my wanderings as a 
journeyman mason over a considerable part of both the 
Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland. About midnight I 
awoke quite chill, and all over sore with the hard beams 
and sharp rivets of the boat. Well, thought I, this is the 
tax I pay for my curiosity. I rose and crept softly over the 
sail to the bows, where I stood, and where, in the singular 
beauty of the scene, which was of a character as different 
from that I had lately witnessed as is possible to conceive, 
I soon lost all sense of every feeling that was not pleasure. 
The breeze had died into a perfect calm. The heavens 
were glowing with stars, and the sea, from the smoothness 
of the surface, appeared a second sky, as bright and starry 
as the other, but with this difference, that all its stars 
appeared comets. There seemed no line of division at the 
horizon, which rendered the allusion more striking. The 
distant hills appeared a chain of dark thundery clouds sleep- 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 183 

ing in the heavens. In short, the scene was one of the 
strangest I ever witnessed ; and the thoughts and imagina- 
tions which it suggested were of a character as singular. I 
looked at the boat as it appeared in the dim light of mid- 
night, a dark irregularly-shaped mass ; I gazed on the sky 
of stars above, and the sky of comets below, and imagined 
myself in the centre of space, far removed from the earth 
and every other world, — the solitary inhabitant of a plane- 
tary fragment. This allusion, too romantic to be lasting, 
was dissipated by an incident which convinced me that I 
had not yet left the world. A crew of south-shore fisher- 
men, either by accident or design, had shot their nets right 
across those of another boat, and, in disentangling them, a 
quarrel ensued. Our boat lay more than half a mile from 
the scene of contention, but I could hear without being 
particularly attentive that on the one side there were 
terrible threats of violence immediate and bloody, and on 
the other, threats of the still more terrible pains and 
penalties of the law. In a few minutes, however, the 
entangled nets were freed, and the roar of altercation 
gradually sunk into a silence as dead as that which had 
preceded it. 

An hour before sunrise, I was somewhat disheartened to 
find the view on every side bounded by a dense low bank 
of fog, which hung over the water, while the central firma- 
ment remained blue and cloudless. The neighbouring 
boats appeared through the mist huge misshapen things, 
manned by giants. We commenced hauling, and found in 
one of the nets a small rock cod and a half-starved whiting, 
which proved the whole of our draught. I was informed 



1 84 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

by the fishermen, that even when the shoal is thickest on 
the Guilliam, so close does it keep by the bank, that not a 
solitary herring is to be caught a gunshot from the edge on 
either side. 

We rowed up to the other boats, few of whom had been 
more successful in their last haul than ourselves, and none 
equally so in their first. The mist prevented us from ascer- 
taining, by known landmarks, the position of the bank, 
which we at length discovered in a manner that displayed 
much of the peculiar art of the fisherman. The depth of 
the water, and the nature of the bottom, showed us that it 
lay to the south. A faint tremulous heave of the sea, which 
was still calm, was the only remaining vestige of the gale 
which had blown from the west in the early part of the 
night, and this heave, together with the current, which at 
this stage of the flood runs in a south-western direction, 
served as our compass. We next premised how far our 
boat had drifted down the frith with the ebb-tide, and how 
far she had been carried back again by the flood. We then 
turned her bows in the line of the current, and in rather 
less than half an hour were, as the lead informed us, on the 
eastern extremity of Guilliam, where we shot our nets for 
the third time. 

Soon after sunrise the mist began to dissipate, and the 
surface of the water to appear for miles around roughened 
as if by a smart breeze, though there was not the slightest 
breath of wind at the time. " How do you account for that 
appearance," said I to one of the fishermen. " Ah, lad, 
that is by no means so favourable a token as the one you 
asked me to explain last night. I had as lief see the 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 185 

Bhodry-more? "Why, what does it betoken? and what 
is the Bhodry-7?tore ? " " It betokens that the shoal have 
spawned, and will shortly leave the frith ; for when the fish 
are sick and weighty they never rise to the surface in that 
way ; — but have you never heard of the Bhodry-more ? " 
I replied in the negative. " Well, but you shall/' " Nay," 
said another of the crew, " leave that for our return; do 
you not see the herrings playing by thousands round our 
nets, and not one of the buoys sinking in the water? 
There is not a single fish swimming so low as the upper 
baulks of our drift. Shall we not shorten the buoy-ropes, 
and take off the sinkers ? n This did not meet the appro- 
bation of the others, one of whom took up a stone, and 
flung it in the middle of the shoal. The fish imme- 
diately disappeared from the surface for several fathoms 
round. "Ah, there they go," he exclaimed, "if they go 
but low enough; — four years ago I startled thirty barrels 
of light fish into my drift just by throwing a stone among 
them." 

The whole frith at this time, so far as the eye could 
reach, -appeared crowded with herrings; and its surface was 
so broken by them as to remind one of the pool of a water- 
fall. They leaped by millions a few inches into the air, 
and sunk with a hollow plumping noise, somewhat resemb- 
ling the dull rippling sound of a sudden breeze ; while to 
the eye there was a continual twinkling, which, while it 
mocked eveiy effort that attempted to examine in detail, 
showed to. the less curious glance like a blue robe sprinkled 
with silver. But it is not by such comparisons that so 
singular a scene is to be described so as to be felt. It was 



1 86 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

one of those which, through the living myriads of creation, 
testify of the infinite Creator. 

About noon we hauled for the third and last time, and 
found nearly eight barrels of fish. I observed when haul- 
ing that the natural heat of the herring is scarcely less than 
that of quadrupeds or birds ; that when alive its sides are 
shaded by a beautiful crimson colour which it loses when 
dead ; and that when newly brought out of the water, it 
utters a sharp faint cry somewhat resembling that of a 
mouse. We had now twenty barrels on board. The 
easterly har, a sea-breeze so called by fishermen, which in 
the Moray Frith, during the summer months and first 
month of autumn, commonly comes on after ten o'clock 
A.M., and fails at four o'clock p.m., had now set in. We 
hoisted our mast and sail, and were soon scudding right 
before it. 

The story of the Bhodry-more, which I demanded of the 
skipper as soon as we had trimmed our sail, proved interest- 
ing in no common degree, and was linked with a great 
rnany others. The Bhodry-more * is an active, mischievous 
fish of the whale species, which has been known to attack 
and even founder boats. About eight years ago, a very 
large one passed the town of Cromarty through the middle 
of the bay, and was seen by many of the townsfolks leaping 
out of the water in the manner of a salmon, fully to the 
height of a boat's mast. It appeared about thirty feet in 
length. This animal may almost be regarded as the mer- 
maid of modern times : for the fishermen deem it to have 
fully as much of the demon as of the fish. There have 

# Properly, perhaps, the musculous whale. 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 187 

been instances of its pursuing a boat under sail for many 
miles, and even of its leaping over it from side to side. It 
appears, however, that its habits and appetites are unlike 
those of the shark ; and that the annoyance which it gives 
the fisherman is out of no desire of making him its prey, 
but from its predilection for amusement. It seldom meddles 
with a boat when at anchor, but pursues one under sail, as 
a kitten would a rolling ball of yarn. The large physalus 
whale is comparatively a dull, sluggish animal ; occasionally, 
however, it evinces a partiality for the amusements of the 
Bhodry-more. Our skipper said, that when on the Caith- 
ness coast, a few years before, an enormous fish of the 
species kept direct in the wake of his boat for more than 
a mile, frequently rising so near the stern as to be within 
reach of the boat-hook. He described the expression of 
its large goggle eyes as at once frightful and amusing ; and 
so graphic was his narrative that I could almost paint the 
animal stretching out for more than sixty feet behind the 
boat, with his black marble-looking skin and cliff-like fins. 
He at length grew tired of its gambols, and with a sharp 
fragment of rock struck it between the eyes. It sunk with 
a sudden plunge, and did not rise for ten minutes after, 
when it appeared a full mile a-stern. This narrative was 
but the first of I know not how many, of a similar cast, 
which presented to my imagination the Bhodry-more whale 
and hun-fish in every possible point of view. The latter, 
a voracious formidable animal of the shark species, fre- 
quently makes great havoc among the tackle with which 
cod and haddock are caught. Like the shark, it throws 
itself on its back when in the act of seizing its prey. The 



188 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

fishermen frequently see it lying motionless, its white belly 
glittering through the water, a few fathoms from the boat's 
side, employed in stripping off every fish from their hooks 
as the line is drawn over it. This formidable animal is 
from six to ten feet in length, and formed like the common 
shark. 

One of the boatmen's stories, though somewhat in the 
Munchausen style, I shall take the liberty of relating. Two 
Cromarty men, many years ago, were employed on a fine 
calm day in angling for coal-fish and rock-cod, with rods 
and hand-lines. Their little skiff rode to a large oblong 
stone, which served for an anchor, nearly opposite a rocky 
spire termed the chapel, three miles south of Shandwick. 
Suddenly the stone was raised from the bottom with a jerk, 
and the boat began to move. "What can this mean," 
exclaimed the elder of the men, pulling in his road, "we 
have surely broken loose, but who could have thought that 
there ran such a current here." The other, a young daring 
fellow, John Clark by name, remarked in reply, that the 
apparent course of the skiff was directly contrary to that of 
the current. The motion, which was at first gentle, in- 
creased to a frightful velocity ; the rope a-head was strait- 
ened until the very stem cracked; and the sea rose upon 
either bows into a furrow that nearly overtopped the gun- 
wale. " Old man," said the young fellow, " didst thou ever 
see the like o' that ! " " Guid save us, boy," said the other, 
" cut, cut the swing." " Na, na, bide a wee first, I manna 
skaith the rape : didst thou ever see the like o' that ! " In 
a few minutes, according to the story, they were dragged in 
this manner nearly two miles, when the motion ceased as 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 189 

suddenly as it had begun, and the skiff rode to the swing as 
before. 

The scenes exhibited on the shores of Cromarty, during 
the busy season of the fishing, afford nearly as much scope 
for description, though of a different character, as those 
in which the occupations of the fisherman mingle with the 
sublime scenes of the Moray Frith. But this description I 
will not attempt. Your readers must have already antici- 
pated it. If not, let them picture to themselves the shores 
of a seaport town crowded with human figures, and its 
harbour with boats and vessels of trade. Let them imagine 
the bustle of the workshop combining with the confusion of 
the crowded fair ! You, Mr Editor, who have seen Hol- 
bein's Dance of Death, would perhaps not question the 
soundness of the imagination that would body forth so busy 
a scene as the dance of commerce. Sailors, fishermen, 
curers, mechanics, all engaged, lead up the ball amid heaps 
of fish that glitter to the sun, tiers of casks and pyramids 
of salt. Hark to the music ! It is a wild combination of 
irregular sounds, — the hammering of mechanics, the rolling 
of casks, the rattling of carts, and the confused hum of a 
thousand voices. — I am, sir, your obedient servant, M. 



V. 

To the Editor of the "Inverness Courier" 

Sir, — The tide of commerce has undergone many changes, 
and perhaps none of its currents flow in a course more 



190 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

unsteady than that of the fishing trade of the Moray Frith. 
It depends upon the wind and the weather, and the eccen- 
tric movements of a shoal of herrings, whether Cromarty 
continues or ceases to be the staple port of this trade. 

Its value, therefore, must be estimated in the same way 
that the directors of an insurance office would calculate 
upon that of the life of one who had a hereditary tendency 
to apoplexy. Within the last century the shoal has twice 
left the frith for the respective periods of sixty and twenty 
years. Perhaps, sir, neither our governors, nor the mem- 
bers of the board instituted by them for guarding the inter- 
ests of this trade, are fully aware of its having this disposi- 
tion to sudden death. Too much, however, has not been 
done by them towards forwarding its interests. The phy- 
sical strength of nations consists in the number and wealth 
of their inhabitants ; and in a country which, like ours, is 
groaning under the weight of a redundant, because poor 
and unemployed population, and where the State is com- 
pelled to pursue an expensive system of emigration as the 
only remedy, the value of any branch of commerce which, 
by employing a number of people, converts a portion of 
the redundancy into a healthy fulness, can scarcely be too 
highly appreciated. It is a charm both potent and valu- 
able which, in the body politic, converts an unsightly and 
unhealthy excrescence into a limb, powerful either to sup- 
port or to defend. 

Perhaps it is not venturing too much to affirm, that the 
expenses incurred by the State in fostering this trade have 
already been fully remunerated. From its commencement 
to the year 1826, a bounty of four shillings has been 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 191 

awarded to the merchant for every barrel of fish cured. 
The sum expended in this way must have been consider- 
able, but to balance against it there are not only the duties 
arising from the great quantity of the taxed commodities 
used by fishermen in fitting out their boats, or in prosecut- 
ing the fishery, — such as hemp, tar, spirituous liquors, &c, 
— but also those derived from every taxed article of neces- 
sity or luxury purchased by the individuals who owe their 
support to this trade. In 1827 the Government bounty 
was lowered to three shillings per barrel; in 1828, to two ; 
in the present year to one ; and for the future it ceases 
altogether. The fishermen have no doubt but that Guil- 
liam fishings can, notwithstanding, still be prosecuted to 
advantage ; but when the shoals turn down the frith before 
they reach this bank, the effects, without some support of 
the kind, would be ruinous. For the last three years, as 
has been formerly stated, the fishing has been unsuccessful, 
and several crews, both this season and the last, were, in 
consequence, unable to fit out their boats. Memorials were 
drawn up and presented by them to the Board of Commis- 
sioners instituted for watching over the interests of the 
fishing, petitioning for assistance, and this was promptly 
given, at the rate of from one to two pounds sterling per 
boat's crew. 

It is confessed, Mr Editor, that the character of the 
inhabitants of a country is of much greater importance, 
abstractly considered, than the state of its commerce. 
A flourishing trade, by increasing both its population and 
wealth, adds to its physical power, but without morals this 
power is either malignant or inefficient. It may either be 



192 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

wielded against itself, or prove unavailing when opposed 
to that of other states. But though, when considered ab- 
stractly, the character of a people occupies a position of 
primary importance, and their trade one merely secondary, 
national commerce and national character must, in many 
cases, be viewed in the relation to each other of cause and 
effect. By those who may assent to the truth of this re- 
mark, it may not be deemed over curious to trace the 
effects of the herring fishery on the character of the fisher- 
man ; it is first necessary, however, to make a few prelimi- 
nary remarks on his general character, as taking its form 
from the peculiar circumstances of his profession. 

Unfortunately for him, one of his employments, the pro- 
curing and preparing of bait, occupies much time, but 
requires so small an exertion of strength or skill as to be 
work for children. At an age, therefore, when the children 
of mechanics are at school, those of the fishermen are 
either employed in baiting hooks, or in digging for the sand- 
worm. When they become a little older, the boys accom- 
pany their fathers to sea ; and in their sixteenth or seven- 
teenth year they are provided with the necessary tackle, 
and soon become such masters of the art of fishing as to be 
able to provide for families. Early marriage is the conse- 
quence. The greater part of the males are married before 
they attain their twentieth year, and the females even 
earlier. The harassing employments of the profession, and 
the cares of a family, prevent the fisherman, when married, 
from acquiring that education which he did not acquire 
when single, and he is thus shut up to a life of toil and 
of ignoran.ce. Nor is there anything in the round of his 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 193 

ordinary labours calculated to rouse his energies. They are 
peculiarly monotonous. His nights are spent at sea ; his 
days in sleep, in preparing tackle, or procuring bait. Thus, 
sir, in the midst of a round of cares and employments, that 
are too little of themselves to give action to the better 
faculties of his mind, and of such frequent recurrence as to 
prevent him from acquiring that general knowledge which 
furnishes the best exercises to those faculties, the fisherman 
is confined to a walk of society whose range is alike un- 
favourable to morals and the dignity of human nature. 

The herring fishery is excellently calculated by rousing 
his energies to improve his intellectual character. In the 
ordinary round of his occupations, his cares and the objects 
of them lie too near each other. He prepares his tackle 
during the day, in the expectation of procuring fish at night. 
Even the instincts of the inferior animals have scarcely 
a narrower range. But the preparations for the herring 
fishery occupy at the least two-thirds of the year. The 
fisherman is stimulated by hope ; he ventures considerable 
property in the speculation ; he reasons, he calculates : in 
short, by descrying advantage while yet distant, and in 
making preparations to secure it, he assumes and deserves 
the character peculiar to man. 

And it is not only in this way that his mental powers are 
brought into action by this trade. The profession, which is 
pursued with nearly equal success by all who prosecute it, 
must of necessity furnish little exercise for the faculties of 
the mind ; and vice versa that employment, in which one 
man excels and another falls short, in which one is success- 
ful and another the contrary, cannot be pursued without 

N 



194 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

considerable exertion of thought. The truth of this remark 
must appear evident, so long as men differ from each other 
in the portions of talent which they possess. Now, the 
ordinary labours of the fisherman are of the former char- 
acter ; the employments which the herring fishery afford 
him are of the latter. The portion of coast fish, such 
as haddocks, whitings, &c, caught by any one crew 
of fishermen, belonging to this port, in the course of a 
season, may with safety be calculated upon as an average 
by which to ascertain the quantity taken by the whole ; but 
the case is different with them as herring fishers. There 
are crews in the place whose herring fishings, in ordinary 
seasons, average about one hundred and fifty barrels, and 
there are others, with boats fitted out exactly in the same 
manner, and furnished with an equal number of nets, whose 
fishings scarcely average eighty. 

The inference obviously proves that the latter employ- 
ment requires a greater degree of skill than the former ; — 
that it demands much skill is a fact easily established, with- 
out a comparative reference to the ordinary and less diffi- 
cult labours of the profession. A perfect knowledge of the 
frith is required, its different soundings, currents, varieties 
of bottom, and, above all, of the numerous landmarks by 
which the bearings and positions of the several tracks are 
ascertained. An acquaintance with the tides in their 
changes from stream to neap is also essential. It is neces- 
sary, too, that the fisherman be acquainted with the various 
courses of the fish, and their different haunts. He must 
likewise acquire an ability of calculation, independent of 
figures, for determining the station from whence his boat 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 195 

will drift over a certain extent of banks ; and, what is more 
essential to him than all such knowledge and acquirements, 
he must possess readiness of resource and presence of 
mind. There are few professions less mechanical than 
that of the herring fisherman ; and the effects of its ever- 
varying and ceaseless demands on his ingenuity cannot be 
other than favourable to the intellectual character of the 
man whose mental faculties, when he is engaged in the 
round of his ordinary labours, rust for want of exercise. 

The effects of this trade on his circumstances (those 
deemed essential to external comfort) are commonly favour- 
able. When pursuing his ordinary employments, the earn- 
ings of the week are barely sufficient to supply its wants ; 
and had he no other source of profit when spending 
his active season of life in toiling for a precarious sub- 
sistence, he could only look forward through a long vista of 
toil and privation to an old age of pauperism. From a 
condition which seems so wretchedly comfortless, the her- 
ring trade presents the only outlet. The gains of the 
fisherman in a successful season are considerable, — so high 
as twenty, thirty, and even fifty pounds sterling. It is true 
that while the other effects, which I have attempted to de- 
scribe, act favourably on his character, this one is either 
favourable or the reverse, according to the previous bent 
of that character. The others give it a tone ; this, on the 
contrary, takes its tone from it. But whatever it proves in 
a few particular cases, that must be considered a general 
good which, to the man of careful habits, is both comfort 
and independence. 

In summing up the advantages of this trade, it is to be 



196 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

observed that the profession dependent on it, that of the 
herring cooper, is one of those which Bacon recommends 
as proper to be pursued by the males of a free state. Nor 
will the remark appear more nice than just when we reflect 
how many kinds of manufacture there are by which the 
nation is enriched as an emporium of trade, but impover- 
ished as a body of men. 

It were idle to insist further on the value of the Moray 
Frith herring fishery ; its interests are those of the country 
at large, and they are connected with the intellectual as 
well as physical improvement of part of the inhabitants. It 
is to be regretted that it furnishes a dependence so pre- 
carious. Like those unfortunate individuals who are sub- 
ject to death-like trances, there is danger of its being buried 
alive ; and perhaps the State is alone qualified to act as its 
physician. Without some powerful interference, were the 
herrings to fail in their annual visit for three or four seasons 
together, the trade would infallibly be ruined, and would 
experience no revival with the return of the fish, nor per- 
haps for many years after ; for the merchant would be un- 
willing to risk capital on so precarious a subject, and the 
poor fisherman would be unable. There is a fact which 
bears direct on this. From the brief history attempted in 
my second letter, it will appear evident that the Moray 
Frith herring fishery, which has only been carried on for 
the last twelve years, could have been prosecuted with 
advantage for the last thirty. 

Six years ago I spent a season in Gairloch, a wild High- 
land parish on the western coast of Ross-shire, nearly 
opposite the Isle of Skye. The frith or loch, from whence 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 197 

it derives its name, had a few seasons previous been the 
scene of a busy and successful fishing, but was at that time 
deserted by the herrings ; and the circumstances of the poor 
fishermen reminded me of those of my townsmen in the 
first few years that immediately succeeded the departure of 
the herring drove. I found them, in consequence of the 
failure of their trade, vacant, listless, and sinking into 
apathy. But though the circumstances were alike, the 
characters of the people were somewhat different ; for the 
inhabitants of Gairloch belong to an age more remote than 
that of Queen Anne. They are now what the Lowland 
Scotch were three hundred years ago. I have heard, Mr 
Editor, (only heard, for I am no musician,) that the peculiar 
tone upon which a piece of vocal music is raised by a sort 
of sympathy of sound, must unavoidably be that of every 
one who joins in the air. There exists a similar sympathy 
in the tone of refinement. Knowledge and good taste give 
this tone to those who lead in the concert, while those who 
follow acquire it by imitation. The inhabitants of Gairloch, 
from their total want of it, differ, as I have said, very con- 
siderably from the people who reside on the eastern coast. 
I have had much pleasure in marking the varieties of this 
difference, and in reflecting, that though I could not retrace 
the flight of time, or transport myself from the present age 
to that of my early ancestors, I could study in the inhabi- 
tants of Gairloch human character, bearing the same appear- 
ances which it presented among my townsfolks three hun- 
dred years ago. 

The remark, however, does not exactly bear on my sub- 
ject, which I have now pretty nearly exhausted. I avail 



198 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

myself of no apology, aware that something could be said 
both for and against the manner in which I have treated it. 
I have travelled over the ground a humble pedestrian, but 
others have not driven over it with the gaiety of equipage ; 
and it is the same circumstances which have prevented me 
from attaining the art of communicating in the most pleas- 
ing manner the fruit of my observations on the subject, that 
have placed me in the best point possible for minute obser- 
vation. — I am, sir, your obedient servant, M. 

Cromarty, 29^ August 1829. 



POSTSCRIPT. 

Sir, — It has been remarked that the Caithness and Moray 
Frith herring fisheries are seldom pursued with equal success 
in the same season; but that, on the contrary, when the 
quantity caught on the one station rates above average, it 
falls below it on the other. Were the truth of this estab- 
lished, something like a theory of the fishing trade could be 
formed, which would be of singular advantage both to 
fishermen and herring merchants. A number of vessels 
from Ireland, and the south-west of Scotland, prosecute this 
trade on the coast of Caithness and in the Moray Frith, and 
bring along with them salt and casks for the quantity of 
fish which they require. Now, sir, were it established that 
the body of herrings, which makes an annual visit to the 
eastern coast of Scotland, is always nearly equal in size, 
but that it divides into two unequal shoals, of which the 



LETTERS ON THE HERRING FISHERY. 199 

larger, in some seasons, comes up the Moray Frith, and in 
others remains on the coast of Caithness, these sailing 
merchants, instead of remaining stationary until the close 
of the fishing on the coast at which they first arrived, would 
experience the advantage of attending the larger shoal, 
whether at Wick or at Cromarty. And this plan, if carried 
into effect, in the event of a scanty fishing on the one 
station, would prevent any useless and hurtful competition 
from taking place between the ship merchants and stationary 
curers, (to the latter of whom, in this case, the whole of the 
fish caught on the coast would be disposed ;) and it would 
also, on the other, avert the less advantageous consequences 
of a fishing unusually prosperous, such as very reduced 
prices and exhaustion of salt and casks. For the further- 
ance of this plan, a few public-spirited judicious individuals 
could, I should think, be found who would readily act as 
reporters at the different stations ; and their notices of the 
appearance of fish on their respective coasts could each 
season, at an early stage of the fishing, be submitted to the 
different ship-curers through the medium of the Inverness 
newspapers. Two circumstances, however, must be con- 
sidered, First, though the success of the fishing depends 
greatly on the size of the shoal, there rests still more, as I 
have already had occasion to notice, on. the state of the 
weather. Secondly, it remains to be proven whether the 
remark upon which I have attempted to build something 
like a system, be just. The former is one of those circum- 
stances connected with the herring fishing, which in a cer- 
tain measure removes success in this branch of trade alike 
beyond the reach of control or calculation ; the degree of 



200 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

certainty which can be attached to the latter could, it strikes 
me, be easily ascertained. Your ingenious John O'Groat 
correspondent can perhaps furnish you with an account of 
the Caithness fishings for the last eight years ; I subjoin a 
statement of those of the Moray Frith for that period, 
which, though only supplied by memory, is, I trust, sub- 
stantially correct. By comparing notes, enough may appear 
either to invalidate the remark, or to affix such a degree of 
credit to it as may attract the attention of men better 
acquainted with the statistics of the herring fishery than, 
sir, your obedient servant, M. 

Statement. — Fishing of 1822, average ; 1823, consider- 
ably above do.; 1824, tolerable, but rather below do.; 
1825, do., do. ; 1826, considerably below do. ; 1827, do., 
do. ; 1828, very much below do. ; 1829, average, supposing 
shoal gone off. 



THE LYKEWAKE. 

I know no place where one may be brought acquainted 
with the more credulous beliefs of our forefathers at a less 
expense of inquiry and exertion than in a country lyke- 
wake. The house of mourning is naturally a place of 
sombre thoughts and ghostly associations. There is some- 
thing, too, in the very presence and appearance of death 
that leads one to think of the place and state of the dead. 
Cowper has finely said, that the man and the beast who 
stand together side by side on the same hill-top are, not- 
withstanding their proximity, the denizens of very different 
worlds. And I have felt the remark to apply still more 
strongly when sitting beside the dead. The world of 
intellect and feeling in which we ourselves are, and of 
which the lower propensities of our nature form a province, 
may be regarded as including, in part at least, that world 
of passion and instinct in which the brute lives; and we 
have but to analyse and abstract a little, to form for our- 
selves ideas of this latter world from even our own ex- 
perience. But by what process of thought can we bring 
experience to bear on the world of the dead? It lies 
entirely beyond us, — a terra incognita of cloud and dark- 
ness; and yet the thing at our side, — the thing over which 



202 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

we can stretch our hand, — the thing dead to us ? but living 
to it, — has entered upon it; and, however uninformed or 
ignorant before, knows more of its dark, and to us inscrut- 
able mysteries, than all our philosophers and all our 
divines. Is it wonder that we would fain put it to the 
question, that we would fain catechise it, if we could, 
regarding its newly-acquired experience, — that we should 
fill up the gaps in the dialogue which its silence leaves to 
us, by imparting to one another the little we know regard- 
ing its state and its place, — or that we should send our 
thoughts roaming in long excursions, to glean from the 
experience of the past all that it tells us of the occasional 
visits of the dead, and all that in their less taciturn and 
more social moments they have communicated to the 
living ? And hence, from feelings so natural, and a train 
of associations so obvious, the character of a country 
lykewake, and the cast of its stories. I say a country 
lykewake; for in at least all our larger towns, where a 
cold and barren scepticism has chilled the feelings and 
imaginations of the people, without, I fear, much improving 
their judgments, the conversation on such occasions takes 
a lower and less interesting range. 

I once spent a night with a friend from the south — a 
man of an inquiring and highly philosophic cast of mind— 
at a lykewake in the upper part of the parish of Cromarty. 
I had excited his curiosity by an incidental remark or two 
of the kind I have just been dropping ; and, on his ex- 
pressing a wish that I should introduce him, by way of 
illustration, to some such scene as I had been describing, 
we had set out together to the wake of an elderly female 



THE LYKEWAKE. 203 

who had died that morning. Her cottage, a humble 
erection of stone and lime, was situated beside a thick 
fir-wood, on the edge of the solitary Mullbuoy, one of the 
dreariest and most extensive commons in Scotland. We 
had to pass in our journey over several miles of desolate 
moor, sprinkled with cairns and tumuli, — the memorials 
of some forgotten conflict of the past ; w^e had to pass, too, 
through a thick, dark wood, with here and there an inter- 
vening marsh, w 7 hitened over with moss and lichens, and 
which, from this circumstance, are known to the people 
of the country as the white bogs. Nor was the more 
distant landscape of a less gloomy character. On the one 
hand there opened an interminable expanse of moor, that 
went stretching onwards, mile beyond mile, bleak, dreary, 
uninhabited and uninhabitable, till it merged into the far 
horizon. On the other, there rose a range of blue, solitary 
hills, towering, as they receded, into loftier peaks and 
bolder acclivities, till they terminated on the snow-streaked 
Ben Wyvis. The season, too, w r as in keeping with the 
scene. It was drawing towards the close of autumn; and, 
as we passed through the wood, the falling leaves w r ere 
eddying round us with every wind, or lay in rustling heaps 
at our feet. * 

"I do not winder," said my companion, "that the su- 
perstitions of so wild a district as this should bear in their 
character some marks of a corresponding wildness. Night 
itself, in a populous and cultivated country, is attended 
with less of the stern and the solemn than mid-day amid 
solitudes like these. Is the custom of watching beside the 
dead of remote antiquity in this part of the country? ;; 



204 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

" Far beyond the reach of either history or tradition," I 
said. " But it has gradually been changing its character, as 
the people have been changing theirs ; and is now a very 
different thing from what it was a century ago. It is not 
yet ninety years since lykewakes in the neighbouring High- 
lands used to be celebrated with music and dancing ; and 
even here, on the borders of the low country, they used 
invariably, like the funerals of antiquity, to be the scenes 
of wild games and amusements never introduced on any 
other occasion. You remember how Sir Walter describes 
the funeral of Athelstane ? The Saxon ideas of condolence 
were the most natural imaginable. If grief was hungry, 
they supplied it with food ; if thirsty, they gave it drink. 
Our simple ancestors here seem to have reasoned by a 
similar process. They made their seasons of deepest 
grief their times of greatest merriment ; and the more 
they regretted the deceased, the gayer were they at his 
wake and his funeral. A friend of mind, now dead, a 
very old man, has told me that he once danced at a 
lykewake in the Highlands of Sutherland. It was that of 
an active and very robust man, taken away from his wife 
and family in the prime of life ; and the poor widow, for 
the greater part of the evening, sat disconsolate beside 
the fire, refusing every invitation to join the dancers. She 
was at length, however, brought out by the father of the 
deceased. ( Little, little did he think/ he said, ( that she 
would be the last to dance at poor Rory's lykewake.' " 

We reached the cottage, and went in. The apartment 
in which the dead lay was occupied by two men and three 
women. Every little piece of furniture it contained was 



THE LYKEWAKE. 205 

hung in white, and the floor had recently been swept and 
sanded ; but it was on the bed where the body lay ; and on 
the body itself, that the greatest care had been lavished. 
The curtains had been taken down, and their place sup- 
plied by linen white as snow ; and on the sheet that served 
as a counterpane, the body was laid out in a dress of white, 
fantastically crossed and recrossed in every direction by 
scalloped fringes, and fretted into a species of open work, 
at least intended to represent alternate rows of roses and 
tulips. A plate, containing a little salt, was placed over 
the breast of the corpse. As we entered, one of the 
women rose, and, rilling two glasses with spirits, presented 
them to us on a salver. We tasted the liquor, and sat 
down on chairs placed for us beside the fire. The con- 
versation, which had been interrupted by our entrance, 
began to flow apace ; and an elderly female, who had 
lived under the same roof with the deceased, began to 
relate, in answer to the queries of one of the others, some 
of the particulars of her last illness and death. 



THE STORY OF ELSPAT M'CULLOCH. 

" Elspat was aye," she said, " a retired body, wi' a cast 
o' decent pride aboot her ; an', though bare an' puirly aft 
sometimes in her auld days, she had never been chargeable 
to onybody. She had come o' decent, 'sponsible people, 
though they were a' low enough the day ; ay, an' they were 
God-fearm' people too, wha had gien plenty in their time, 
an' had aye plenty to gie. An' though they had been a' 



206 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

langsyne laid in the kirkyard, — a' except hersel', puir body, 
— she wadna disgrace their gude name, she said, by takin' 
an alms frae ony ane. Her sma' means fell oot o' her 
hands afore her last illness. Little had aye dune her turn, 
but the little failed at last ; an' sair, sair thocht did it gie 
her for a while what was to come o' her. I could hear her, 
in the butt-end o' the hoose ae morning mair earnest an' 
langer in her prayers than usual; though she never neglected 
them, puir body; an' a' the early part o' that day she seemed 
to be no weel. She was aye up an' down ; an' I could 
ance or twice hear her gauntin' at the fireside ; but when I 
went ben to her, an' asked what was the matter wi' her, she 
said she was just in her ordinar'. She went oot for a wee ; 
an' what did I do, but gang to her aumry, for I jaloused a* 
wasna right there ; and oh ! it was a sair sicht to see, 
neebors ; for there was neither a bit o' bread nor a grain o' 
meal within its four corners, — naething but the sealed-up 
graybeard wi' the whisky that for twenty years an' mair she 
had been keepin' for her lykewake ; an', ye ken, it was 
oot o' the question to think that she wad meddle wi' it. 
Weel did I scold her, when she cam' in, for being sae close- 
minded. I asked her what harm I had ever dune to her, 
that she wad rather hae died than hae trusted her wants to 
me ? But though she said naething, I could see the tears 
in her e'e ; an' sae I stopped, an' we took a late breakfast 
thegither at my fireside. 

" She tauld me that mornin' that she weel kent she 
wadna lang be a trouble to onybody. The day afore had 
been Sabbath ; an' every Sabbath mornin', for the last ten 
years, her worthy neebor the elder, whom they had buried 



THE LYKEWAKE. 207 

only four years afore, used to ca' on her in the passing on 
his way to the kirk. ' Come awa, Elspat,' he wad say ; 
an' she used to be aye decent an' ready, for she liked his 
conversation ; an' they aye gaed thegither to the kirk. 
She had been contracted, when a young lass, to a brither o' 
the elder's, a stout, handsome lad ; but he had been ca'ed 
suddenly awa atween the contract an' the marriage, an 
Elspat, though she had afterwards mony a gude offer, had 
lived single for his sake. Weel, on the very mornin' afore, 
just sax days after the elder's death, an' four after his burial, 
when Elspat was sittin' dowie aside the fire, thinkin' o' her 
gude auld neebor, the cry cam' to the door just as it used to 
do ; but, though the voice was the same, the words were 
a wee different. ' Elspat,' it said, i mak' ready, an' come 
awa/ She rose hastily to the window, an' there, sure 
enough, was the elder, turning the corner in his Sunday's 
bonnet an' his Sunday's coat. An' weel did she ken, she 
said, the meaning o' his ca', an' kindly did she tak' it. An' 
if it was but God's wull that she suld hae enough to put 
her decently under the ground, without going in debt to 
any one, she wad be weel content. She had already the 
linen for the dead-dress, she said ; for she had spun it for 
the purpose afore her contract wi' William ; an' she had the 
whisky too, for the wake ; but she had naething anent the 
coffin an' the bedral. 

" Weel, we took our breakfast, an' I did my best to com- 
fort the puir body ; but she looked very down-hearted for 
a' that. About the middle o' the day, in cam' the minister's 
boy wi' a letter. It was directed to his master, he said ; 
but it was a' for Elspat ; an' there was a five-pound note in 



203 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

it. It was frae a man wha had left the country mony, 
mony a year afore, a good deal in her faither's debt. You 
wad hae thought the puir thing wad hae grat her een oot 
when she saw the money; but never was money mair 
thankfully received, or ta'en mair directly frae heaven. It 
set her aboon the warld, she said ; an* comin' at the time 
it did, an estate o' a thousand a-year wadna be o' mair use 
to her. Next mornin' she didna rise, for her strength had 
failed her at once, though she felt nae meikle pain ; an' she 
sent me to get the note changed, an to leave twenty shil- 
lings o't wi' the wright for a decent coffin like her mither's, 
an' five shillings mair wi' the bedral, an' to tak' in neces- 
saries for a sick-bed wi' some o' the lave. Weel, I did that; 
an' there 's still twa pounds o' the note yonder in the little 
cupboard. 

" On the fifth mornin' after she had been ta'en sae ill, I 
cam' in till ask after her ; for my neebor here had relieved 
me o' that night's watchin', an' I had gotten to my bed. 
The moment I opened the door I saw that the haill room 
was hung in white, just as ye see it now, an' I'm sure it 
stayed that way a minute or sae; but when I winked it 
went awa. I kent there was a change no far off; an' when 
I went up to the bed, Elspat didna ken me. She was 
wirkin' wi' her han' at the blankets, as if she were pickin' 
aff the little motes ; an' I could hear the beginning o' the 
dead rattle in her throat. I sat at her bedside for a while 
wi' my neebor here ; an' when she spoke to us, it was to 
say that the bed had grown hard an' uneasy, an' that she 
wished to be brought out to the chair. Weel, we indulged 
her, though we baith kent that it wasna in the bed the 



THE LYKEWAKE. 209 

uneasiness lay. Her mind, puir body, was carried at the 
time : she just kent that there was to be a death an' a lyke- 
wake, but no that the death an' the lykewake were to be 
her ain ; an' whan she looked at the bed, she bade us tak' 
down the black curtains an' put up the white, an' tauld us 
where the white were to be faund. 

"'But where is the corp?' she said; 'it's no there. 
Where is the corp?' 

" ' Oh, Elspat, it will be there vera soon,' said my neebor ; 
an' that satisfied her. 

" She cam' to herseP an hour afore she departed. God 
had been very gude to her, she said, a' her life lang, an' He 
hadna forsaken her at the last. He had been gude to her 
whan He had gien her friens, an' gude to her when He took 
them to Himsel' ; and she kent she was now going to baith 
Him an' them. There wasna such a difference, she said, 
atween life an' death as folk w T ere ready to think. She was 
sure that, though William had been ca'ed awa suddenly, he 
hadna been ca'ed without being prepared ; an' now that her 
turn had come, an' that she was goin' to meet wi' him, it 
was maybe as weel that he had left her early ; for, till she 
had lost him, she had been owre licht an' thochtless ; an' 
had it been her lot to hae lived in happiness wi' him,, she 
micht hae remained licht an' thochtless still. She bade us 
baith fareweel, an' thanked an' blessed us j an' her last 
breath went awa' in a prayer no half an hour after. Puir, 
decent body ! But she's no puir now." 

" A pretty portrait/' whispered my companion, " of one 
of a class fast wearing away. Nothing more interests me 
in the story than the woman's undoubting faith in the super- 



210 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

natural : she does not even seem to know that what she 
believes so firmly herself is so much as doubted by others. 
Try whether you can't bring up, by some means, a few other 
stories furnished with a similar machinery, — a story of the 
second sight, for instance." 

" The only way of accomplishing that," I replied, " is by 
contributing a story of the kind myself. 

" The vision of the room hung in white," I said, " re- 
minds me of a story related about a hundred and fifty years 
ago by a very learned and very ingenious countryman of 
ours, — George, first Earl of Cromarty. His Lordship, a 
steady royalist, was engaged shortly before the Restoration 
(he was then, by the way, only Sir George Mackenzie,) in 
raising troops for the king on his lands on the western 
coast of Ross-shire. There came on one of those days 
of rain and tempest so common in the district ; and Sir 
George, with some of his friends, were storm-bound in a 
solitary cottage somewhere on the shores of Lochbroom. 
Towards evening one of the party went out to look after their 
horses. He had been sitting beside Sir George, and the 
chair he had occupied remained empty. On Sir George's 
servant, an elderly Highlander, coming in, he went up to 
his master, apparently much appalled, and, tapping him on 
the shoulder, urged him to rise. c Rise !' he said, 'rise ! 
there's a dead man sitting on the chair beside you/ The 
whole party immediately started to their feet, but they saw 
only the empty chair. The dead man was visible to the 
Highlander alone. His head was bound up, he said, and 
his face streaked with blood, and one of his arms hung 
broken by his side. Next day, as a party of horsemen 



THE LYKEWAKE. 211 

were passing along the steep side of a hill in the neighbour- 
hood, one of the horses stumbled and threw its rider \ and 
the man, grievously injured by the fall, was carried in a 
state of insensibility to the cottage. His head was deeply 
gashed, and one of his arms was broken, though he ulti- 
mately recovered ; and on being brought to the cottage he 
was placed, in a death-like swoon, in the identical chair 
which the Highlander had seen occupied by the spectre. 
Sir George relates the story, with many a similar story be- 
sides, in a letter to the celebrated Robert Boyle." 

" I have perused it with much interest/' said my friend, 
"and wonder our booksellers should have suffered it to 
become so scarce. Do you not remember the somewhat 
similar story his Lordship relates of the Highlander who 
saw. the apparition of a troop of horse ride over the brow 
of a hill, and enter a field of oats, which, though it had 
been sown only a few days before, the horsemen seemed to 
cut down with their swords ? He states that a few months 
after a troop of cavalry actually entered the same field, and 
carried away the produce for fodder to their horses. He 
tells, too, if I remember aright, that, on the same expedi- 
tion to which your story belongs, one of his Highlanders, 
en entering a cottage, started back with horror : he had 
met in the passage, he said, a dead man in his shroud, and 
saw people gathering for a funeral. And, as his Lordship 
relates, one of the inmates of the cottage, who was in per- 
fect health at the time of the vision, died suddenly only two 
days after." 



212 TALES AND SKETCHES. 



THE STORY OF DONALD GAIR. 

" The second sight/' said an elderly man who sat beside 
me, and whose countenance had struck me as highly ex- 
pressive of serious thought, " is fast wearing out of this part 
of the country. Nor should we much regret it perhaps. 
It seemed, if I may so speak, as something outside the 
ordinary dispositions of Providence ; and, with all the 
horror and unhappiness that attended it, served no appa- 
rent good end. I have been a traveller in my youth, 
masters. About thirty years ago I served for some time 
in the navy. I entered on the first breaking out of the 
Revolutionary war, and was discharged during the short 
peace of 1801. One of my chief companions on shipboard 
for the first few years was a young man, a native of Suther- 
land, named Donald Gair. Donald, like most of his coun- 
trymen, was a staid, decent lad, of a rather melancholy cast, 
and yet there were occasions when he could be quite gay 
enough too. We sailed together in the Bedford, under Sir 
Thomas Baird ; and, after witnessing the mutiny at the 
Nore, — neither of us did much more than witness it, for in 
our case it merely transferred the command of the vessel 
from a very excellent captain to a set of low Irish Doctor's- 
list men, — we joined Admiral Duncan, then on the Dutch 
station. We were barely in time to take part in the great 
action. Donald had been unusually gay all the previous 
evening. We knew the Dutch had come out, and that 
there was to be an engagement on the morrow ; and, 
though I felt no fear, the thought that I might have to 



THE LYKEWAKE. 213 

stand in a few brief hours before my Maker and my Judge 
had the effect of rendering me serious. But my companion 
seemed to have lost all command of himself; he sung, and 
leaped, and shouted, not like one intoxicated, — there was 
nothing of intoxication about him, — but under the influence 
of a wild irrepressible flow of spirits. I took him seriously 
to task, and reminded him that we might both at that mo- 
ment be standing on the verge of death and judgment. 
But he seemed more impressed by my remarking that, were 
his mother to see him, she would say he vtas/ey. 

" We had never been in action before with our captain, 
Sir Thomas. He was a grave, and, I believe, God-fearing 
man, and much a favourite with at least all the better sea- 
men. But we had not yet made up our minds on his char- 
acter ; indeed, no sailor ever does with regard to his officers 
till he knows how they fight; and we were all curious to 
see how the parson, as we used to call him, would behave 
himself among the shot. But truly we might have had 
little fear for him. I have sailed with Nelson, and not 
Nelson himself ever showed more courage or conduct than 
Sir Thomas in that action. He made us all lie down 
beside our guns, and steered us, without firing a shot, into 
the very thickest of the fight ; and when we did open, 
masters, every broadside told with fearful effect. I never 
saw a man issue his commands with more coolness or self- 
possession. 

" There are none of our Continental neighbours who 
make better seamen, or who fight more doggedly, than the 
Dutch. We were in a blaze of flame for four hours. Our 
rigging was slashed to pieces ; and two of our ports were 



214 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

actually knocked into one. There was one fierce, ill- 
natured Dutchman, in particular, — a fellow as black as 
night, without so much as a speck of paint or gilding about 
him, save that he had a red lion on the prow, — that fought 
us as long as he had a spar standing ; and when he struck 
at last, fully one-half the crew lay either dead or wounded 
on the decks, and all his scupper-holes were running blood 
as freely as ever they had done water at a deck-washing. 
The Bedford suffered nearly as severely. It is not in the 
heat of action that we can reckon on the loss we sustain. 
I saw my comrades falling around me, — falling by the 
terrible cannon shot, as they came crashing in through 
our sides ; I felt, too, that our gun wrought more heavily 
as our numbers were thinning around it; and at times, 
when some sweeping chain-shot or fatal splinter laid open 
before me those horrible mysteries of the inner man which 
nature so sedulously conceals, I was conscious of a momen- 
tary feeling of dread and horror. But in the prevailing 
mood, an unthinking anger, a dire thirsting after revenge, 
a dogged, unyielding firmness, were the chief ingredients. 
I strained every muscle and sinew; and amid the smoke, 
and the thunder, and the frightful carnage, fired and loaded, 
and fired and loaded, and, with every discharge, sent out 
as it were the bitterness of my whole soul against the 
enemy. But very different were my feelings when victory 
declared in our favour, and, exhausted and unstrung, I 
looked abroad among the dead. As I crossed the deck, 
my feet literally splashed in blood ; and I saw the mangled 
fragments of human bodies sticking in horrid patches to the 
sides and the beams above. There was a fine little boy 



THE LYKEWAKE. 215 

aboard, with whom I was an especial favourite. He had 
been engaged, before the action, in the construction of a 
toy ship, which he intended sending to his mother \ and I 
used sometimes to assist him, and to lend him a few simple 
tools • and, just as we were bearing down on the enemy, he 
had come running up to me with a knife, which he had 
borrowed from me a short time before. 

" l Alick, Alick/ he said, ' I have brought you your knife : 
we are going into action, you know, and I may be killed, 
and then you would lose it.' 

" Poor little fellow ! The first body I recognised was 
his. Both his arms had been fearfully shattered by a 
cannon shot, and the surgeon's tourniquets, which had 
been fastened below the shoulders, were still there; but 
he had expired ere the amputating knife had been applied. 
As I stood beside the body, little in love with war, masters, 
a comrade came up to me, to say that my friend and 
countryman, Donald Gair, lay mortally wounded in the 
cockpit. I went instantly down to him. But never shall 
I forget, though never may I attempt to describe, what I 
witnessed that day, in that frightful scene of death and 
suffering. Donald lay in a low hammock, raised not a foot 
over the deck ; and there was no one beside him, for the 
surgeons had seen at a glance the hopelessness of his case, 
and were busied about others of whom they had hope. 
He lay on his back, breathing very hard, but perfectly 
insensible ; and in the middle of his forehead there was a 
round little hole, without so much as a speck of blood 
about it, where a musket bullet had passed through the 
brain. He continued to breathe for about two hours ; and 



216 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

when he expired, I wrapped the body decently up in a 
hammock, and saw it committed to the deep. The years 
passed ; and, after looking death in the face in many a 
storm and many a battle, peace was proclaimed, and I 
returned to my friends and my country. 

"A few weeks after my arrival, an elderly Highland 
woman, who had travelled all the way from the farther side 
of Loch Shin to see me, came to our door. She was the 
mother of Donald Gair, and had taken her melancholy 
journey to hear from me all she might regarding the last 
moments and death of her son. She had no English, and 
I had not Gaelic enough to converse with her ; but my 
mother, who had received her with a sympathy all the 
deeper from the thought that her own son might have been 
now in Donald's place, served as our interpreter. She was 
strangely inquisitive, though the little she heard served only 
to increase her grief; and you may believe it was not much 
I could find heart to tell her ; for what was there in the 
circumstances of my comrade's death to afford pleasure to 
his mother? And so I waived her questions regarding his 
wound and his burial as I best could. 

"' Ah,' said the poor woman to my mother, 'he need 
not be afraid to tell me all. I know too, too well, that my 
Donald's body was thrown into the sea ; I knew of it long 
ere it happened ; and I have long tried to reconcile my 
mind to it, — tried when he was a boy even ; and so you 
need not be afraid to tell me now.' 

"'And how/ asked my mother, whose curiosity was 
excited, ' could you have thought of it so early?' 

" 4 I lived,' rejoined the woman, ' at the time of Donald's 



THE LYKEWAKE. 217 

birth, in a lonely shieling among the Sutherland hills, — a 
full day's jo.urney from the nearest church. It was a long, 
weary road, over moors and mosses. It was in the winter 
season, too, when the days are short ; and so, in bringing 
Donald to be baptized, we had to remain a night by the 
way, in the house of a friend. We there found an old 
woman of so peculiar an appearance, that, when she asked 
me for the child, I at first declined giving it, fearing she was 
mad, and might do it harm. The people of the house, 
however, assured me she was incapable of hurting it ; and 
so I placed it on her lap. She took it up in her arms, and 
began to sing to it ; but it was such a song as none of us 
had ever heard before. 

" ' Poor little stranger ! f she said, ' thou hast come into 
the world in an evil time. The mists are on the hills, 
gloomy and dark, and the rain lies chill on the heather; 
and thou, poor little thing, hast a long journey through the 
sharp, biting winds, and thou art helpless and cold. Oh, 
but thy long after-journey is as dreary and dark. A 
wanderer shalt thou be over the land and the ocean 3 and 
in the ocean shalt thou lie at last. Poor little thing, I 
have waited for thee long. I saw thee in thy wanderings, 
and in thy shroud, ere thy mother brought thee to the 
door ; and the sounds of the sea, and of the deadly guns, 
are still ringing in my ears. Go, poor little thing to thy 
mother. Bitterly shall she yet weep for thee, and no 
wonder; but no one shall ever weep over thy grave, or 
mark where thou liest amid the deep green, with the sharl{ 
and the seal. 

" i From that evening,' continued the mother of my 



2i 8 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

friend, 1 1 have tried to reconcile my mind to what was to 
happen Donald. But oh, the fond, foolish heart ! I loved 
him more than any of his brothers, because I was to lose 
him soon ; and though, when he left me, I took farewell of 
him for ever, — for I knew I was never, never to see him 
more, — I felt, till the news reached me of his fall in battle, 
as if he were living in his coffin. But oh ! do tell me all 
you know of his death. I am old and weak, but I have 
travelled far, far to see you, that I might hear all; and 
surely, for the regard you bore to Donald, you will not 
suffer me to return as I earned 

" But I need not dwell longer on the story. I imparted 
to the poor woman all the circumstances of her son's death, 
as I have done to you ; and, shocking as they may seem, I 
found that she felt rather relieved than otherwise." 

" This is not quite the country of the second sight," said 
my friend ; " it is too much on the borders of the Low- 
lands. The gift seems restricted to the Highlands alone, 
and it is now fast wearing out even there." 

"And weel it is," said one of the men, "that it should 
be sae. It is surely a miserable thing to ken o' coming 
evil, if we just merely ken that it is coming, an' that come 
it must, do what we may. Hae ye ever heard the story o' 
the kelpie that wons in the Conon?" 

My friend replied in the negative. 



THE LYKEWAKE. 219 



THE STORY OF THE DOOMED RIDER. 

" The Conon," continued the man, " is as bonny a river 
as we hae in a' the north country. There 's mony a sweet 
sunny spot on its banks; an 7 mony a time an' aft hae I 
waded through its shallows, when a boy, to set my little 
scantling-line for the trouts an' the eels, or to gather the 
big pearl mussels that lie sae thick in the fords. But its 
bonny wooded banks are places for enjoying the day in, — 
no for passing the nicht. I kenna how it is : it 's nane o' 
your wild streams, that wander desolate through a desert 
country like the Avon, or that come rushing down in foam 
and thunder, owre broken rocks,Uike the Foyers, or that 
wallow in darkness, deep, deep in the bowels o' the earth, 
like the fearfu' Auldgraunt ; an' yet no ane o' these rivers 
has mair or frightfuler stories connected wi' it than the 
Conon. Ane can hardly saunter owre half a mile in its 
course, frae where it leaves Contin till where it enters the 
sea, without passing owre the scene o' some frightful auld 
legend o' the kelpie or the water-wraith. And ane o' the 
maist frightful looking o' these places is to be found among 
the woods o' Conon House. Ye enter a swampy meadow, 
that waves wi' flags an' rushes like a corn-field in harvest, 
an' see a hillock covered wi' willows rising like an island 
in the midst. There are thick mirk woods on ilka side ; 
the river, dark an* awesome, an' whirling round and round 
in mossy eddies, sweeps away behind it; an' there is an 
auld burying-ground, wi' the broken ruins o' an auld Papist 
kirk, on the tap. Ane can still see among the rougher 



220 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

stanes the rose-wrought mullions of an arched window, an 
the trough that ance held the holy water. About twa 
hunder years ago, — a wee mair, maybe, or a wee less, for 
ane canna be very sure o' the date o' thae auld stories, — 
the building was entire ; an' a spot near it, whar the wood 
now grows thickest, was laid out in a corn-field. The marks 
o' the furrows may still be seen amang the trees. A party 
o' Highlanders were busily engaged a'e day in harvest in 
cutting down the corn o' that field ; an' just aboot noon, 
when the sun shone brightest, an' they were busiest in the 
work, they heard a voice frae the river exclaim, — i The 
hour, but not the man, has come.' Sure enough, on look- 
ing round, there was the kelpie standin' in what they ca' a 
fause ford, just foment the auld kirk. There is a deep, 
black pool baith aboon an' below, but i' the ford there 's a 
bonnie ripple, that shows, as ane might think, but little 
depth o x water; an' just i' the middle o' that, in. a place 
where a horse might swim, stood the kelpie. An' it again 
repeated its words, — 'The hour, but not the man, has 
come ;' an' then, flashing through the water like a drake, it 
disappeared in the lower pool. When the folk stood won- 
dering what the creature might mean, they saw a man on 
horseback come spurring down the hill in hot haste, 
making straight for the fause ford. They could then 
understand her words at ance ; an' four o' the stoutest o' 
them sprang oot frae amang the corn, to warn him o* his 
danger, an' keep him back. An' sae they tauld him what 
they had seen an' heard, an' urged him either to turn back 
an' tak' anither road, or stay for an hour or sae where he 
was. Eut he just wadna hear them, for he was baith 



THE L YKE WAKE. 22 1 

unbelieving an' in haste, an' would hae taen the ford for 
a* they could say, hadna the Highlanders, determined on 
saving him, whether he would or no, gathered round him 
an' pulled him frae his horse, an' then, to mak' sure o' him, 
locked him up in the auld kirk. Weel, when the hour had 
gone by, — the fatal hour o' the kelpie, — they flung open 
the door, an' cried to him that he might noo gang on his 
journey. Ah, but there was nae answer though ; an' sae 
they cried a second time, an' there was nae answer still \ an' 
then they went in, and found him lying stiff an' cauld on 
the floor, wf his face buried in the water o' the very stane 
trough that we may still see among the ruins. His hour 
had come, an' he had fallen in a fit, as 'twould seem, head 
foremost among the water o' the trough, where he had 
been smothered; an' sae, ye see, the prophecy o' the kelpie 
availed nothing." 

" The very story," exclaimed my friend, " to which Sir 
Walter alludes, in one of the notes to ' The Heart of Mid- 
Lothian.' The kelpie, you may remember, furnishes him 
with a motto to the chapter in which he describes the 
gathering of all Edinburgh to witness the execution of 
Porteous, and their irrepressible wrath on ascertaining 
that there was to be no execution, — 'The hour, but not 
the man, is come.'" 

** I remember making quite the same discovery," I re- 
plied, " about twelve years ago, when I resided for several 
months on the banks of the Conon, not half a mile from 
the scene of the story. One might fill a little book with 
legends of the Conon. The fords of the river are danger- 
ous, especially in the winter season ; and about thirty years 



222 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

ago, before the erection of the fine stone bridge below 
Conon House, scarcely a winter passed in which fatal 
accidents did not occur ; and these were almost invariably 
traced to the murderous malice of the water-wraith." 

" But who or what is the water-wraith?" said my friend: 
" we heard just now of the kelpie, and it is the kelpie that 
Sir Walter quotes." 

" Ah," I replied," " but we must not confound the kelpie 
and the water-wraith, as has become the custom in these 
days of incredulity. No two spirits, though they were both 
spirits of the lake and the river, could be more different. 
The kelpie invariably appeared in the form of a young 
horse ; the water-wraith in that of a very tall woman, 
dressed in green, with a withered meagre countenance, 
ever distorted by a malignant scowl. It is the water-wraith, 
not the kelpie, whom Sir Walter should have quoted ; and 
yet I could tell you curious stories of the kelpie too." 

" We must have them all," said my friend, " ere we part. 
Meanwhile, I should like to hear some of your stories of 
the Conon." 

"As related by me," I replied, "you will find them 
rather meagre in their details. In my evening walks along 
the river, I have passed the ford a hundred times, out of 
which, only a twelvemonth before, as a traveller was enter- 
ing it on a moonlight night, the water-wraith started up, 
not four yards in front of him, and pointed at him with 
her long skinny fingers, as if in mockery. I have leaned 
against the identical tree to which a poor Highlander clung, 
when, on fording the river by night, he was seized by the 
goblin. A lad who accompanied him, and who had sue- 



THE LYKEWAKE. 223 

ceeded in gaining the bank, strove to assist him, but in 
vain : the poor man was dragged from his hold into the 
current, where he perished. The spot has been pointed 
out to me, too, in the opening of the river, where one ot 
our Cromarty fishermen, who had anchored his yawl for 
the night, was laid hold of by the spectre when lying asleep 
on the beams, and almost dragged over the gunwale into 
the water. Our seafaring men still avoid dropping anchor, 
if they possibly can, after the sun has set, in what they 
term the fresh, — that is, in those upper parts of the frith 
where the waters of the river predominate over those of 
the sea. 

" The scene of what is deemed one of the best authenti- 
cated stories of the water-wraith lies a few miles higher up 
the river. It is a deep, broad ford, through which horse- 
men coming from the south pass to Brahan Castle. A 
thick wood hangs over it on the one side ; on the other, 
it is skirted by a straggling line of alders and a bleak moor, 
On a winter night, about twenty-five years ago, a servant 
of the late Lord Seaforth had been drinking with some 
companions till a late hour, in a small house in the upper 
part of the moor ; and when the party broke up, he was 
accompanied by two of them to the ford. The moon was 
at full, and the river, though pretty deep in flood, seemed 
noway formidable to the servant : he was a young, vigor- 
ous man, and mounted on a powerful horse ; and he had 
forded it, when half a yard higher on the bank, twenty 
times before. As he entered the ford, a thick cloud 
obscured the moon; but his companions could see him 
guiding the animal. He rode in a slanting direction 



224 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

across the stream, until he had reached nearly the middle, 
when a dark, tall figure seemed to start out of the water, 
and lay hold of him. There was a loud cry of distress 
and terror, and a frightful snorting and plunging of the 
horse. A moment passed, and the terrified animal was 
seen straining towards the opposite bank, and the ill-fated 
rider struggling in the stream. In a moment more he had 
disappeared." 



THE STORY OF FAIRBURN'S GHOST. 

"I suld weel ken the Conon," said one of the women, 
who had not yet joined in the conversation. " I was born 
no a stane's cast frae the side o 9 t. My mother lived in 
her last days beside the auld Tower o' Fairburn, that 
stands sae like a ghaist aboon the river, an' looks down 
on a* its turns and windings frae Contin to the sea. My 
faither, too, for a twelvemonth or sae afore his death, had 
a boat on ane o' its ferries, for the crossing, on week- 
days, o' passengers, an* o' the kirk-going folks on Sunday. 
He had a little bit farm beside the Conon; an' just got 
the boat by way o' eiking out his means, — for we had aye 
eneugh to do at rent-time, an' had maybe less than plenty 
through a' the rest o' the year besides. Weel, for the 
first ten months or sae, the boat did brawly. The Castle 
o' Brahan is no half a mile frae the ferry, an' there were 
aye a hantle o' gran 7 folk comin' and gangin' frae the Mac- 
kenzie, an my faither had the crossin' o' them a\ And 
besides, at Marti'mas, the kirk -going peop/e used to send 



THE LYKEWAKE. 225 

him firlots o' bear an* pecks o' oatmeal ; an* he soon 
began to find that the bit boat was to do mair towards 
paying the rent o' the farm than the farm itseP. 

" The Tower o' Fairburn is aboot a mile and a-half 
aboon the ferry. It stands by itseP on the tap o' a heathery 
hill, an' there are twa higher hills behind it. Beyond, 
there spreads a black dreary desert, where ane micht wan- 
der a lang simmer's day withoot seeing the face o' a human 
creature, or the kindly smoke o' a lum. I daresay nane 
o' you hae heard hoo the Mackenzies o' Fairburn an the 
Chisholms o' Strathglass parted that bit d kintra atween 
them. Nane o' them could tell where the lands o' the 
ane ended or the ither began, an' they were that way for 
generations, till they at last thocht them o' a plan o' 
division. Each o' them gat an auld wife o' seventy-five, 
an' they set them aff ae Monday at the same time, the ane 
frae Erchless Castle, an' the ither frae the Tower, warning 
them aforehand, that the braidness o' their maisters' lands 
depended on their speed ; for where the twa would meet 
among the hills, there would be the boundary. An' you 
may be sure that neither o' them lingered by the way that 
morning. They kent there was mony an e'e on them, 
an' that their names would be spoken o' in the kintra-side 
lang after themseFs were dead an 7 gane ; but it sae hap- 
pened that Fairburn's carline, wha had been his nurse, 
was ane o' the slampest women in a' the north o' Scotland, 
young or auld ; an', though the ither did weel, she did sae 
meikle better, that she had got owre twenty lang Highland 
miles or the ither had got owre fifteen. They say it was a 
droll sicht to see them at the meeting, — they were baith 



226 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

tired almost to fainting ; but no sooner did they come in 
sicht o' ane anither, at the distance o' a mile or sae, than 
they began to run. An' they ran an' better ran, till they 
met at a little burnie ; an' there wad they hae focht, though 
they had ne'er seen ane anither atween the een afore, had 
they had strength eneugh left them ; but they had neither 
pith for fechtin' nor breath for scolding an' sae they just sat 
down an' girned at ane anither across the stripe. The 
Tower o' Fairburn is naething noo but a dismal ruin o' five 
broken stories, — the ane aboon the ither, — an' the lands 
hae gane oot o' the auld family ; but the story o' the twa 
auld wives is a weel-kent story still. 

" The laird o' Fairburn, in my faither's time, was as fine 
an open-hearted gentleman as was in the haill country. 
He was just particular gude to the puir; but the family 
had ever been that ; ay, in their roughest days, even whan 
the Tower had neither door nor window in the lower 
story, an' only a wheen shot-holes in the story aboon. 
There wasna a puir thing in the kintra but had reason 
to bless the laird ; an' at ae time he had nae fewer than 
twelve puir orphans living about his house at ance. Nor 
was he in the least a proud, haughty man : he wad chat 
for hours thegither wi' ane o' his puirest tenants ; an' ilka 
time he crossed the ferry, he wad tak' my faither wi' him, 
for company just, maybe half a mile on his way out or 
hame. Weel, it was ae nicht about the end o' May, — 
a bonny nicht, an hour or sae after sun-down, — an' my 
faither was mooring his boat, afore going to bed, to an 
auld oak tree, whan wha does he see but the laird o' 
Fairburn coming down the bank? Od, thocht he, what 



THE LYKEWAKE. 227 

can be takin' the laird frae hame sae late as this? I 
thocht he had been no weel. The laird cam' steppin' 
into the boat, but, instead o' speakin' frankly, as he used 
to do, he just waved his hand, as the proudest gentleman 
in the kintra micht, an' pointed to the ither side. My 
faith er rowed him across ; but, oh ! the boat felt unco 
dead an' heavy, an' the water stuck around the oars as 
gin it had been tar; an' he had just eneugh ado, though 
there was but little tide in the river, to mak' oot the 
ither side. The laird stepped oot, an' then stood, as he 
used to do, on the bank, to gie my faither time to fasten 
his boat, an' come alang wi' him ; an' were it no for that, 
the puir man wadna hae thocht o' going wi' him that 
nicht ; but as it was, he just moored his boat an' went. 
At first he thocht the laird must hae got some bad news 
that made him sae dull, and sae he spoke on, to amuse 
him, aboot the weather an' the markets j but he found 
he could get very little to say, an' he felt as arc an' eerie 
in passin' through the woods as gin he had been passin' 
alane through a kirk-yard. He noticed, too, that there 
was a fearsome flichterin' an' shriekin' amang the birds 
that lodged in the tree-taps aboon them ; an' that, as 
they passed the Talisoe, there was a collie on the tap o* 
a hillock, that set up the awfulest yowling he had ever 
heard. He stood for a while in sheer consternation, but 
the laird beckoned him on, just as he had done at the 
river side, an' sae he gaed a bittie farther alang the wild 
rocky glen that opens into the deer-park. But oh, the 
fright that was amang the deer ! They had been lyin' 
asleep on the knolls, by sixes an' sevens; an' up they 



228 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

a' started at ance, and gaed driving aff to the far end o' 
the park, as if they couldna be far eneugh frae my faither 
an' the laird. Weel, my faither stood again, an' the laird 
beckoned an' beckoned as afore ; but, Gude tak' us a* 
in keeping ! whan my faither looked up in his face, he 
saw it was the face o* a corp : it was white an' stiff, an' 
the nose was thin an' sharp, an' there was nae winking 
wi' the wide open een. Gude preserve us ! my faither 
didna ken where he was stan'in' — didna ken what he was 
doin' j an', though he kept his feet, he was just in a kind 
o' swarf, like. The laird spoke twa or three words to 
him, — something about the orphans, he thocht; but he 
was in such a state that he couldna tell what ; an' whan 
lie cam' to himsel' the apparition was awa\ It was a 
bonny clear nicht whan they had crossed the Conon ; but 
there had been a gatherin' o' black cluds i' the lift as 
they gaed, an' there noo cam' on, in the clap o' a han', 
ane o' the fearsomest storms o' thunder an' lightning that 
was ever seen in the country. There was a thick gurly 
aik smashed to shivers owre my faither's head, though 
nane o' the splinters steered him; an' whan he reached 
the river, it was roaring frae bank to brae, like a little 
ocean ; for a water-spout had broken amang the hills, an' 
the trees it had torn doun wi' it were darting alang the 
current like arrows. He crossed in nae little danger, an' 
took to his bed ; an', though he raise an' went aboot his 
wark for twa or three months after, he was never, never 
his ain man again. It was found that the laird had de- 
parted no five minutes afore his apparition had come to 
the ferry ; an' the very last words he had spoken, — but 



THE LYKEWAKE. 229 

his mind was carried at the time, — was something aboot 
my faither." 



THE STORY OF THE LAND FACTOR. 

" There maun hae been something that weighed on his 
mind," remarked one of the women, " though your faither 
had na power to get it frae him. I mind that, whan I was 
a lassie, there happened something o' the same kind. My 
faither had been a tacksman on the estate o' Blackhall ; an' 
as the land was sour an' wat, an' the seasons for a while 
backward, he aye contrived — for he was a hard-working, 
carefu' man — to keep us a' in meat and claith, and to meet 
wi ; the factor. But, waes me ! he was sune ta'en frae us. 
In the middle o' the seed-time, there cam' a bad fever intil 
the country; an' the very first that died o J t was my puir 
faither. My mither did her best to keep the farm, an' haud 
us a' thegither. She got a carefu', decent lad to manage 
for her, an' her ain e'e was on everything ; an', had it no 
been for the cruel, cruel factor, she micht hae dune gey 
weel. But never had the puir tenant a waur friend than 
Ranald Keilly. He was a toun writer, an' had made a sort 
o' living, afore he got the factorship, just as toun writers do 
in ordinar'. He used to be gettin' the haud o' auld wives' 
posies when they died ; an' there were aye some litigeous, 
troublesome folk in the place, too, that kept him doing a 
little in the way o' troublin' their neebors ; an' sometimes, 
when some daft, gowked man, o' mair means than sense, 
couldna mismanage his ain affairs eneugh, he got Keilly to 



230 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

mismanage them for him. An* sae he had picked up a 
bare livin' in this way; but the factorship made him just a 
gentleman. But, oh, an ill use did he mak' o' the power 
that it gied him owre puir, honest folk ! Ye maun ken that, 
gin they were puir, he liked them a' the waur for being 
honest ; but, I daresay, that was natural eneugh for the like 
o' him. He contrived to be baith writer an' factor, ye 
see; an' it wad just seem that his chief aim in the ae 
capacity was to find employment for himsel' in the ither. 
If a puir tenant was but a day behind-hand wi' his rent, he 
had creatures o* his ain that used to gang half an' half wi ? 
him in their fees; an' them he wad send aff to poind him; 
an' then, if the expenses o' the poindin' werena forthcoming 
as weel as what was owing to the master, he wad hae a 
roup o* the stockin' twa or three days after, an' anither 
account, as a man o' business, for that. An' when things 
were going dog-cheap — as he took care that they should 
sometimes gang — he used to buy them in for himseF, an' 
pairt wi' them again for maybe twice the money. The 
laird was a quiet, silly, good-natured man; an 7 though he 
was tauld weel o' the factor at times, ay, an' believed it too, 
he just used to say, — ' Oh, puir Keilly, what wad he do gin 
I were to pairt wi' him! He wad just starve.' An' oh, 
sirs, his pity for him was bitter cruelty to mony, mony a 
puir tenant, an' to my mither among the lave. 

" The year after my faither's death was cauld an' wat, an' 
oor stuff remained sae lang green, that we just thocht we 
wouldna get it cut ava. An' when we did get it cut, the 
stacks, for the first whilie, were aye heatin' wi' us; an' 
when Marti'mas cam', the grain was still saft an' milky, an' 



THE LYKEWAKE. 231 

no fit for the market. The term cam' round, an' there was 
little to gie the factor in the shape o' money, though there 
was baith corn and cattle ; an' a' that we wanted was just 
a little time. Ah, but we had fa'en into the hands o' ane 
that never kent pity. My mither hadna the money gin, 
as it were, the day, an' on the morn the messengers cam' 
to poind. The roup was no a week after ; an* oh, [it was 
a grievous sicht to see how the crop an' the cattle went for 
just naething. The farmers were a' puirly afif wi' the late 
ha'rst, an' had nae money to spare; an' sae the factor 
knocked in ilka thing to himsel', wi' hardly a bid against 
him. He was a rough-faced, little man, wi' a red, hooked 
nose, — a gude deal gi'en to whisky, an' very wild an' 
desperate when he had ta'en a glass or twa aboon ordinar' ; 
an' on the day o' the roup he raged like a perfect madman. 
My mither spoke to him again an' again, wi' the tear in her 
e'e, an' implored him, for the sake o' the orphan an' the 
widow, no to hurry hersel' an' her bairns; but he just 
cursed an' swore a' the mair, and knocked down the stacks 
an' the kye a' the faster ; an' when she spoke to him o' the 
ane aboon a', he said that Providence gied lang credit an' 
reckoned on a lang day, an' that he wad tak' him intil his 
ain hands. Weel, the roup cam' to an end, an' the sum o' 
the whole didna come to meikle mair nor the rent, an* 
clear the factor's lang, lang account for expenses; an' at 
nicht my mither was a ruined woman. The factor staid 
up late an' lang, drinkin' wi' some creatures o' his ain ; an' 
the last words he said on going to his bed was, that he 
hadna made a better day's wark for a twelvemonth. But, 
Gude tak' us a' in keeping ! in the mornin' he was a 



232 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

corp, — a cauld, lifeless corp, wi' a face as black as my 
bonnet 

" Weel, he was buried, an' there was a grand character o' 
him putten in the newspapers, an' we a' thocht we were to 
hear nae mair aboot him. My mither got a wee bittie o' a 
house on the farm o' a neebor, an' there we lived dowie 
eneugh ; but she was aye an eident, workin' woman, an 7 she 
now span late an' early for some o' her auld friends, the 
farmers' wives ; an' her sair-won penny, wi' what we got frae 
kindly folk wha minded us in better times, kept us a' alive. 
Meanwhile, strange stories o' the dead factor began to gang 
aboot the kintra. First, his servants, it was said, were hear- 
ing arc, curious noises in his counting-office. The door 
was baith locked an' sealed, waiting till his friends would 
cast up, for there were some doots aboot them ; but, locked 
an' sealed as it was, they could hear it openin' and shuttin' 
every nicht, an' hear a rustlin' among the papers, as gin 
there had been half-a-dozen writters scribblin' among them 
at ance. An' then, Gude preserve us a' ! they could hear 
Keilly himsel' as if he were dictatin' to his clerk. An', 
last o' a', they could see him in the gloamin', hicht an' 
mornin', gangin' aboot his house, wringin' his hands, an' 
aye, aye mutterin' to himsel' aboot roups and poindin's. 
The servant girls left the place to himsel'; an' the twa lads 
that wrought his farm, an' slept in a hay-loft, were sae dis- 
turbed, nicht after nicht, that they had just to leave it to 
himsel' too. 

" My mither was ae nicht wi' some o' her spinnin' at a 
neeborin' farmer's, a worthy God-fearing man, an' an eldei 
o' the kirk. It was in the simmer time, an' the nicht was 



THE LYKEWAKE. 233 

bricht an* bonny ; but, in her backcomin' she had to pass 
the empty house o' the dead factor, an' the elder said that 
he would tak' a step hame wi' her, for fear she michtna be 
that easy in her mind. An' the honest man did sae. Nae- 
thing happened them in the passin', except that a dun cow, 
ance a great favourite o' my mither's, cam' up lowing to 
them, puir beast, as gin she would hae better liked to be 
gaun hame wi' my mither than stay where she was. But 
the elder didna get afif sae easy in the backcomin\ He 
was passin' beside a thick hedge, whan what does he see 
but a man inside the hedge takin' step for step wi' him as 
he gaed ! The man wore a dun coat, an' had a huntin' 
whip under his arm, an' walked, as the elder thocht, very 
like what the dead factor used to do whan he had gotten a 
glass or twa aboon ordinar'. Weel, they cam' to a slap in 
the hedge, an' out cam' the man at the slap \ an', Gude 
tak' us a' in keepin' i it was sure eneugh the dead factor 
himsel'. There were his hook nose, an' his rough, red 
face, though it was maybe bluer noo than red ; an' there 
were the boots an' the dun coat he had worn at my mither's 
roup, an' the very whip he had lashed a puir gangrel woman 
wi' no a week afore his death. He was mutterm' somethin' 
tc himsel' ; but the elder could only hear a wordie noo an' 
then. ' Poind an' roup,' he would say, — 6 poind an' roup ;' 
an' then there would come out a blatter o' curses, — '-Hell, 
hell ! an' damn, damn !' The elder was a wee fear-stricken 
at first, as wha wadna ? but then the ill words, an' the way 
they were said, made him angry ; for he could never bear 
ill words without checkin' them ; an' sae he turned round 
wi' a stern brow, an' asked the appearance what it wanted, 



234 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

an' why it should hae come to disturb the peace o' the 
kintra, and to disturb him ? It stood still at that, an' said, 
wi' an awsome grane, that it couldna be quiet in the grave 
till there were some justice done to Widow Stuart. It then 
tauld him that there were forty gowd guineas in a secret 
drawer in his desk that hadna been found, an' tauld him 
where to get them, an' that he wad need gang wi' the laird 
an' the minister to the drawer, an' gie them a' to the widow. 
It couldna hae rest till then, it said, nor wad the kintra hae 
rest either. It willed that the lave o' the gear should be 
gien to the puir o' the parish, for nane o' the twa folk that 
laid claim to it had the shadow o' a right. An' wi' that 
the appearance left him. It just went back through the 
slap in the hedge, an', as it stepped owre the ditch, vanished 
in a puff o' smoke. 

" Weel, but to cut short a lang story : the laird and the 
minister were at first gay slow o' belief, no that they mis- 
doubted the elder, but they thocht that he must hae been 
deceived by a sort o' wakin' dream. But they soon changed 
their minds, for, sure eneugh, they found the forty guineas 
in the secret drawer. An' the news they got frae the south 
about Keilly was just as the appearance had said ; no ane 
mair nor anither had a richt to his gear, for he had been a 
foundlin', an' had nae friends. An' sae my mither got the 
guineas, an' the parish got the rest, an' there was nae mair 
heard o' the apparition. We didna get back oor auld farm ; 
but the laird gae us a bittie that served oor turn as weel ; 
an' or my mither was ca'ed awa frae us, we were a' settled 
in the warld, an' doin' for oorsels." 



THE L YKE WAKE. 23 5 



THE STORY OF THE MEAL-MONGER. ' 

u It is wonderful/' remarked the decent-looking, elderly- 
man who had contributed the story of Donald Gair, — " it 
is wonderful how long a recollection of that kind may live 
in the memory without one's knowing it is there. There is 
no possibility of one taking an inventory of one's recollec- 
tions. They live unnoted and asleep, till roused by some 
likeness of themselves, and then up they start, and answer 
to it, as 'face answereth to face in a glass.' There comes a 
story into my mind, much like the last, that has lain there 
all unknown to me for the last thirty years, nor have I heard 
any one mention it since ; and yet when I was a boy no 
story could be better known. You have all heard of the 
dear years that followed the harvest of '40, and how fear- 
fully they bore on the poor. The scarcity, doubtless, came 
mainly from the hand of Providence, and yet man had his 
share in it too. There were forestallers of the market, who 
gathered their miserable gains by heightening the already 
enormous price of victuals, — thus adding starvation to 
hunger; and among the best-known and most execrated 
of these was one M'Kechan, a residenter in the neighbour- 
ing parish. He was a hard-hearted, foul-spoken man ; and 
often what he said exasperated the people as much against 
him as what he did. When, on one occasion, he bought up 
all the victual in a market, there was a ringing of hands 
among the women, and they cursed him to his face ; but 
when he added insult to injury, and told them, in his pride 
that he had not left them an ounce to foul their teeth, they 



236 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

would that instant have taken his life, had not his horse 
carried him through. He was a mean, too, as well as a 
hard-hearted man, and used small measures and light 
weights. But he made money, and deemed himself in a 
fair way of gaining a character on the strength of that alone, 
when he was seized by a fever, and died after a few days' 
illness. Solomon tells us, that when the wicked- perish, 
there is shouting ; there was little grief in the sheriffdom 
when M'Kechan died; but his relatives buried him de- 
cently ; and, in the course of the next fortnight, the meal 
fell twopence the peck. You know the burying-ground of 
St Bennet's : the chapel has long since been ruinous, and a 
row of wasted elms, with white, skeleton-looking tops, runs 
around the enclosure, and look over the fields that surround 
it on every side. It lies out of the way of any thoroughfare, 
and months may sometimes pass, when burials are unfre- 
quent, in which no one goes near it. It was in St Bennet's 
that M'Kechan was buried; and the people about the farm- 
house that lies nearest it were surprised, for the first month 
after his death, to see the figure of a man, evening and 
morning, just a few minutes before the sun had risen, and a 
few after it had set, walking round the yard under the elms 
three times, and always disappearing, when it had taken the 
last turn, beside an old tomb near the gate. It was of course 
always clear daylight when they saw the figure ; and the 
month passed ere they could bring themselves to suppose 
that it was other than a thing of flesh and blood like them- 
selves. The strange regularity of its visits, however, at 
length bred suspicion : and the farmer himself — a plain, 
decent man, of more true courage than men of twice the 



THE LYKEWAKE. 237 

pretence — determined one evening on watching it. He 
took his place outside the wall a little before sunset ; and 
no sooner had the red light died away on the elm tops, than 
up started the figure from among the ruins on the opposite 
side of the burying-ground, and came onward in its round, 
muttering incessantly as it came, — ' Oh, for mercy sake ! 
for mercy sake ! a handful of meal : I am starving ; I am 
starving : a handful of meal ! ' And then, changing its 
tone into one still more doleful, — c Oh/ it exclaimed, ' alas 
for the little lippie and the little peck ! alas for the little 
lippie and the little peck V As it passed, the farmer 
started up from his seat ; and there, sure enough, was 
M'Kechan, the corn-factor, in his ordinary dress, and, 
except that he was thinner and paler than usual, like a man 
suffering from hunger, presenting nearly his ordinary ap- 
pearance. The figure passed with a slow, gliding sort of 
motion; and, turning the farther corner of the burying- 
ground, came onward in its second round ; but the farmer, 
though he had felt rather curious than afraid as it went by, 
found his heart fail him as it approached the second time, 
and, without waiting its coming up, set off homeward 
through the corn. The apparition continued to take its 
rounds evening and morning for about two months after, 
and then disappeared for ever. Meal-mongers had to 
forget the story, and to grow a little less afraid, ere 
they could cheat with their accustomed coolness. Be- 
lieve me, such beliefs, whatever may be thought of them 
in the present day, have not been without their use in 
the past." 

As the old man concluded his story, one of the women 



238 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

rose to a table in the little room, and replenished our 
glasses. We all drank in silence. 

" It is within an hour of midnight," said one of the men, 
looking at his watch : " we had better recruit the fire, and 
draw- in our chairs. The air aye feels chill at a lykewake 
or a burial. At this time to-morrow we will be lifting the 
corpse." 

There was no reply. We all drew in our chairs nearer 
the fire, and for several minutes there was a pause in the 
conversation ; but there were more stories to be told, and 
before the morning many a spirit was evoked from the 
grave, the vast deep, and the Highland stream. 



BILL WHYTE. 

I had occasion, about three years ago, to visit the ancient 
burgh of Fortrose. It was early in winter : the days were 
brief, though pleasant, and the nights long and dark ; and, 
as there is much in Fortrose which the curious traveller 
deems interesting, I had lingered amid its burying-grounds 
and its broken and mouldering tenements till the twilight 
had fairly set in. I had explored the dilapidated ruins 
of the Chanonry of Ross ; seen the tomb of old Abbot 
Boniface, and the bell blessed by the Pope ; run over the 
complicated tracery of the Runic obelisk, which had been 
dug up, about sixteen years before, from under the founda- 
tions of the old parish church ; and visited the low, long 
house, with its upper windows buried in the thatch, in 
which the far-famed Sir James Mackintosh had received 
the first rudiments of his education. And in all this I 
had been accompanied by a benevolent old man of the 
place, — a mighty chronicler of the past, who, when a boy, 
had sat on the same form with Sir James, and who on this 
occasion had seemed quite as delighted in meeting with a 
patient and interested listener as I had been in finding so 
intelligent and enthusiastic a storyist. There was little 
wonder, then, that twilight should have overtaken me in 
such a place, and in such company. 



240 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

There are two roads which run between Cromarty and 
Fortrose : the one, the king's highway ; the other, a narrow 
footpath that goes winding for several miles under the 
immense wall of cliffs which overhangs the northern shores 
of the Moray Frith, and then ascends to the top by narrow 
and doubtful traverses along the face of an immense preci- 
pice termed the Scarf's Crag. The latter route is by far 
the more direct and more pleasant of the two to the day- 
traveller ; but the man should think twice who proposes 
taking it by night. The Scarf's Crag has been a scene of 
frightful accidents for the last two centuries. It is not 
yet more than twelve years since a young and very active 
man was precipitated from one of its higher ledges to 
the very beach — a sheer descent of nearly two hundred 
feet; and a multitude of little cairns which mottle the 
sandy platform below bear witness to the not unfrequent 
occurrence of such casualties in the remote past. With 
the knowledge of all this, however, I had determined on 
taking the more perilous road. It is fully two miles 
shorter than the other ; and, besides, in a life of undis- 
turbed security, a slight admixture of that feeling which 
the sense of danger awakens is a luxury which I have 
always deemed worth one's while running some little risk 
to procure. The night fell thick and dark while I was 
yet hurrying along the footway which leads under the 
cliffs; and, on reaching the Scarf's Crag, I could no 
longer distinguish the path, nor even catch the huge out- 
line of the precipice between me and the sky. I knew 
that the moon rose a little after nine ; but it was still 
early in the evening ; and, deeming it too long to wait 



BILL WHYTE. 241 

its rising, I set myself to grope for the path, when, on 
turning an abrupt angle* I was dazzled by a sudden 
blaze of light from an opening in the rock. A large 
fire of furze and brushwood blazed merrily from the in- 
terior of a low-browed but spacious cave, bronzing with 
dusky yellow the huge volume of smoke which went roll- 
ing outwards along the roof, and falling red and strong 
on the face and hands of a thick-set, determined-looking 
man, wellnigh in his sixtieth year, who was seated before 
it on a block of stone. I knew him at once, as an 
intelligent, and, in the main, rather respectable gipsy, 
whom I had once met with about ten years before, and 
who had seen some service as a soldier, it was said, 
in the first British expedition to Egypt. The sight of 
his fire determined me at once. I resolved on passing 
the evening with him till the rising of the moon; and, 
after a brief explanation, and a blunt, though by no means 
unkind invitation to a place beside his fire, I took my 
seat, fronting him, on a block of granite which had been 
rolled from the neighbouring beach. In less than half 
an hour we were on as easy terms as if we had been 
comrades for years ; and, after beating over fifty different 
topics, he told me the story of his life, and found an 
attentive and interested auditor. 

Who of all my readers is unacquainted with Goldsmith's 
admirable stories of the sailor with the wooden leg, and 
the poor half-starved Merry Andrew? Independently of 
the exquisite humour of the writer, they are suited to 
interest us from the sort of cross vistas which they open 
into scenes of life where every thought, and aim, and 

Q 



242 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

incident, has at once all the freshness of novelty and all 
the truth of nature to recommend it. And I felt nearly 
the same kind of interest in listening to the narrative 
of the gipsy. It was much longer than either of Gold- 
smith's stories, and perhaps less characteristic; but it pre- 
sented a rather curious picture of a superior nature rising 
to its proper level through circumstances the most adverse ; 
and, in the main, pleased me so well, that I think I cannot 
do better than present it to the reader. 

" I was born, master," said the gipsy, " in this very cave, 
some sixty years ago, and so am a Scotchman like yourself. 
My mother, however, belonged to the Debatable-land ; my 
father was an Englishman ; and of my five sisters, one first 
saw the light in Jersey, another in Guernsey, a third in 
Wales, a fourth in Ireland, and the fifth in the Isle of Man. 
But this is a trifle, master, to what occurs in some families. 
It can't be now much less than fifty years since my mother 
left us, one bright sunny day, on the English side of Kelso, 
and stayed away about a week. We thought we had lost her 
altogether ; but back she came at last ; and when she did 
come, she brought with her a small sprig of a lad, of about 
three summers or thereby. Father grumbled a little. We 
had got small fry enough already, he said, and bare enough 
and hungry enough they were at times ; but mother showed 
him a pouch of yellow pieces, and there was no more 
grumbling. And so we called the little fellow Bill Whyte, 
as if he had been one of ourselves; and he grew up among 
us, as pretty a fellow as e'er the sun looked upon. I was a 
few years his senior ; but he soon contrived to get half a 
foot ahead of me ; and when we quarrelled, as boys will at 



BILL WHYTE. 243 

times, master, I always came off second best. I never 
knew a fellow of a higher spirit : he would rather starve 
than beg, a hundred times over, and never stole in his life \ 
but then for gin-setting, and deer-stalking, and black-fishing, 
not a poacher in the country got beyond him ; and when 
there was a smuggler in the Solway, who more active than 
Bill ? He was barely nineteen, poor fellow, when he made 
the country too hot to hold him. I remember the night as 
well as if it were yesterday. The Cat-maran lugger was in 
the frith, d'ye see, a little below Caerlaverock \ and fathei 
and Bill, and some half-dozen more of our men, were busy 
in bumping the kegs ashore, and hiding them in the sand. 
It was a thick, smuggy night ; we could hardly see fifty 
yards around us ; and on our last trip, master, when we 
were down in the water to the gunwale, who should come 
upon us, in the turning of a handspike, but the revenue 
lads from Kirkcudbright ! They hailed us to strike, in the 
devil's name. Bill swore he wouldn't. Flash went a 
musket, and the ball whistled through his bonnet. Well, 
he called on them to row up, and up they came ; but no 
sooner were they within half-oar's length, than, taking up a 
keg, and raising it just as he used to do the putting-stone, 
he made it spin through their bottom, as if the planks were 
of window-glass ; and down went their cutter in half a jiffy. 
They had wet powder that night, and fired no more bullets. 
Well, when they were gathering themselves up as they best 
could, — and, goodness be praised ! there were no drown- 
ings amongst them, — we bumped our kegs ashore, hiding 
them with the others, and then fled up the country. We 
knew there would be news of our night's work \ and so 



244 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

there was ; for before next evening there were advertise- 
ments on every post for the apprehension of Bill, with an 
offered reward of twenty pounds. 

" Bill was a bit of a scholar, — so am I, for that matter, — 
and the papers stared him on every side. 

" ' Jack/ he said to me, — ' Jack Whyte, this will never 
do j the law 's too strong for us now ; and if I don't make 
away w T ith myself, they '11 either have me tucked up, or sent 
over seas to slave for life. I '11 tell you what I '11 do. I 
stand six feet in my stocking-soles, and good men w r ere 
never more wanted than at present. 1 11 cross the country 
this very night, and away to Edinburgh, where there are 
troops raising for foreign service. Better a musket than 
the gallows !' 

"'Well, Bill,' I said, 'I don't care though I go with 
you. I 'm a good enough man for my inches, though 1 
ain't so tall as you, and I'm woundily tired of spoon 
making/ 

" And so off we set across the country that very minute, 
travelling by night only, and passing our days in any hiding 
hole we could find, till we reached Edinburgh, and there 
took the bounty. Bill made as pretty a soldier as one 
could have seen in a regiment ; and, men being scarce, I 
wasn't rejected neither; and after just three weeks' drilling, 
— and plaguy weeks they were, — we were shipped off, 
fully finished, for the south. Bonaparte had gone to Egypt, 
and we were sent after him to ferret him out ; though we 
weren't told so at the time. And it was our good luck, 
master, to be put aboard of the same transport. 

" Nothing like seeing the world, for making a man smart. 






BILL WHYTE. 245 

We had all sorts of people in our regiment, — from the 
broken-down gentleman to the broken-down lamplighter; 
and Bill was catching from the best of them all he could. 
He knew he wasn't a gipsy, and had always an eye to get- 
ting on in the world; and as the voyage was a woundy 
long one, and we had the regimental schoolmaster aboard, 
Bill was a smarter fellow at the end of it than he had been 
at the beginning. Well, we reached Aboukir Bay at last. 
You have never been in Egypt, master; but just look 
across the Moray Frith here, on a sunshiny day, and you 
will see a picture of it, if you but strike off the blue High- 
land hills that rise behind from the long range of low sandy 
hillocks that stretches away along the coast between Find- 
horn and Nairn. I don't think it was worth all the trouble 
it cost us ; but the king surely knew best. Bill and I were 
in the first detachment, and we had to clear the way for the 
rest. The French were drawn up on the shore, as thick as 
flies on a dead snake, and the bullets rattled round us like 
a shower of May hail. It was a glorious sight, master, for 
a bold heart. The entire line of sandy coast seemed one 
unbroken streak of fire and smoke ; and we could see the 
old tower of Aboukir rising like a fiery dragon at the one 
end, and the straggling village of Rosetta, half-cloud, half- 
flame, stretching away on the other. There was a line of 
launches and gunboats behind us, that kept up an incessant 
fire on the enemy, and shot and shell went booming over 
our heads. We rowed shorewards, under a canopy of smoke 
and flame; the water was broken by ten thousand oars; 
and never, master, have you heard such cheering; it 
drowned the roar of the very cannon. Bill and I pulled 



246 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

at the same oar; but he bade me cheer, and leave the 
pulling to him. 

" ' Cheer, Jack,' he said, l cheer ! — I am strong enough 
to pull ten oars, and your cheering does my heart good.' 

" I could see, in the smoke and the confusion, that there 
was a boat stove by a shell just beside us, and the man im- 
mediately behind me was shot through the head. But we 
just cheered and pulled all the harder; and the moment 
our keel touched the shore, we leaped out into the water, 
middle-deep, and, after one well-directed volley, charged up 
the beach with our bayonets fixed. I missed footing in the 
hurry, just as we closed, and a big-whiskered fellow in blue 
would have pinned me to the sand, had not Bill struck him 
through the wind-pipe, and down he fell above me; but 
when I strove to rise from under him, he grappled with me 
in his death agony, and the blood and breath came rushing 
through his wound in my face. Ere I had thrown him off, 
my comrades had broken the enemy, and were charging up 
the side of a sand-hill, where there were two field-pieces 
stationed, that had sadly annoyed us in the landing. There 
came a shower of grape-shot whistling round me, that 
carried away my canteen, and turned me half round; and 
when I looked up, I saw, through the smoke, that half my 
comrades were swept away by the discharge, and that the 
survivors were fighting desperately over the two guns, hand- 
to-hand with the enemy. Ere I got up to them, however, — 
and, trust me, master, I didn't linger, — the guns were our 
own. Bill stood beside one of them, all grim and bloody, 
with his bayonet dripping like an eaves-spout in a shower. 
He had struck down five of the French, besides the one he 



BILL WHYTE. 247 

had levelled over me ; and now, all of his own accord, — for 
our sergeant had been killed, — he had shotted the two 
pieces, and turned them on the enemy. They all scampered 
down the hill, master, on the first discharge, — all, save one 
brave, obstinate fellow, who stood firing upon us, not fifty 
yards away, half under cover of a sand-bank. I saw him 
load thrice ere I could hit him, and one of his balls 
whisked through my hat ; but I catched him at last, and 
down he fell. My bullet went right through his forehead. 
We had no more fighting that day. The French fell back 
on Alexandria ; and our troops advanced about three miles 
into the country, over a dreary waste of sand, and then lay 
for the night on their arms. 

" In the morning, when we were engaged in cooking our 
breakfasts, master, making what fires we could with the 
withered leaves of the date-tree, our colonel and two officers 
came up to us. The colonel was an Englishman, — as brave 
a gentleman as ever lived, — ay, and as kind an officer too. 
He was a fine-looking old man, as tall as Bill, and as well 
built too ; but his health was much broken. It was said he 
had entered the army out of break-heart on losing his wife. 
Well, he came up to us, I say, and shook Bill by the hand 
as cordially as if he had been a colonel like himself. He 
was a brave, good soldier, he said, and, to show him how 
much he valued good men, he had come to make him a 
sergeant, in room of the one we had lost. He had heard 
he was a scholar, he said, and he trusted his conduct would 
not disgrace the halberd. Bill, you may be sure, thanked 
the colonel, and thanked him, master, very like a gentle- 
man ; and that very day he swaggered scarlet and a sword 



248 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

as pretty a sergeant as the army could boast of, — ay, and for 
that matter, though his experience was little, as fit for his 
place. 

" For the first fortnight we didn't eat the king's biscuit 
for nothing. We had terrible hard fighting on the 13th; 
and, had not our ammunition failed us, we would have 
beaten the enemy all to rags ; but for the last two hours we 
hadn't a shot, and stood just like so many targets set up to 
be fired at. I was never more fixed in my life than when I 
saw my comrades falling around me, and all for nothing. 
Not only could I see them falling, but, in the absence of 
every other noise,-^for we had ceased to cheer, and stood 
as silent and as hard as foxes, — -I could hear the dull, 
hollow sound of the shot as it pierced them through. 
Sometimes the bullets struck the sand, and then rose and 
went rolling over the level, raising clouds of dust at every 
skip. At times we could see them coming through the air 
like little clouds, and singing all the way as they came. 
But it was the frightful smoking shot that annoyed us most; 
— these horrid shells. Sometimes they broke over our 
heads in the air, as if a cannon charged with grape had 
been fired at us from out the clouds. At times they sank 
into the sand at our feet, and then burst up like so many 
Vesuviuses, giving at once death and burial to hundreds. 
But we stood our ground, and the day passed. I remember 
we got, towards evening, into a snug hollow between two 
sand-hills, where the shot skimmed over us, not two feet 
above our heads ; but two feet is just as good as twenty, 
master; and I began to think, for the first time, that I 
hadn't got a smoke all day. I snapped my musket and 



BILL WHYTE. 249 

lighted my pipe ; and Bill, whom I hadn't seen since the 
day after the landing, came up to share with me. 

" ' Bad day's work, Jack,' he said ; ' but we have at least 
taught the enemy what British soldiers can endure, and, 
ere long, we shall teach them something more. But here 
comes a shell ! Nay, do not move/ he said ; ' it will fall 
just ten yards short.' And down it came, roaring like a 
tempest, sure enough, about ten yards away, and sank into 
the sand. ' There now, fairly lodged,' said Bill; 'lie down, 
lads, lie down.' We threw ourselves flat on our faces ; the 
earth heaved under us like a wave of the sea; and in a 
moment Bill and I were covered with half a ton of sand. 
But the pieces whizzed over us ; and, save that the man 
who was across me had an ammunition bag carried away, 
not one of us more than heard them. On getting ourselves 
disinterred, and our pipes re-lighted, Bill, with a twitch on 
the elbow — so — said he wished to speak with me a little 
apart ; and we w T ent out together into a hollow in front 

" ' You will think it strange, Jack/ he said, ' that all this 
day, when the enemy's bullets were hopping around us 
like hail, there was but just one idea that filled my mind 
and I could find room for no other. Ever since I saw 
Colonel Westhope, it has been forced upon me, through a 
newly-awakened dream-like recollection, that he is the 
gentleman with whom I lived ere I was taken away by 
your people; for taken away I must have been. Your 
mother used to tell me that my father was a Cumberland 
gipsy, who met with some bad accident from the law; 
but I am now convinced she must have deceived me, and 
that my father was no such sort of man. j You will think 



250 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

it strange; but, when putting on my coat this morning, 
my eye caught the silver bar on the sleeve, and there 
leaped into my mind a vivid recollection of having worn a 
scarlet dress before, — scarlet bound with silver; and that 
it was in the house of a gentleman and lady whom I had 
just learned to call papa and mamma. And every time I 
see the colonel, as I say, I am reminded of the gentleman. 
Now, for heaven's sake, Jack, tell me all you know about 
me. You are a few years my senior, and must remember 
better than I can myself under what circumstances I joined 
your tribe.' 

" < Why, Bill/ I said, ' I know little of the matter, and 
'twere no great wonder though these bullets should confuse 
me somewhat in recalling what I do know. Most certainly 
we never thought you a gipsy like ourselves; but then I 
am sure mother never stole you ; she had family enough of 
her own; and, besides, she brought with her for your board, 
she said, a purse with more gold in it than I have seen at 
one time either before or since. I remember it kept us all 
comfortably in the creature for a whole twelvemonth ; and 
it wasn't a trifle, Bill, that could do that. You were at 
first like to die among us. You hadn't been accustomed to 
sleeping out, or to food such as ours. And, dear me ! how 
the rags you were dressed in used to annoy you ; but you 
soon got over all, Bill, and became the hardiest little fellow 
among us. I once heard my mother say that you were a 
love-begot, and that your father, who was an English gentle- 
man, had to part from both you and your mother on taking 
a wife. And no more can I tell you, Bill, for the life 
of me.' 



BILL WHYTE. 251 

"We slept that night on the sand, master, and found 
in the morning that the enemy had fallen back some miles 
nearer Alexandria. Next evening there was a party of us 
despatched on some secret service across the desert. Bill 
was with us; but the officer under whose special charge 
we were placed was a Captain Turpic, a nephew of Colonel 
Westhope, and his heir. But he heired few of his good 
qualities. He was the son of a pettifogging lawyer, and 
was as heartily hated by the soldiers as the colonel was 
beloved. Towards sunset, the party reached a hollow 
valley in the waste, and there rested, preparatory, as we all 
intended, for passing the night. Some of us were engaged 
in erecting temporary huts of branches, some in providing 
the necessary materials; and we had just formed a snug 
little camp, and were preparing to light our fires for supper, 
when we heard a shot not two furlongs away. Bill, who 
was by far the most active among us, sprang up one of the 
tallest date trees to reconnoitre. But he soon came down 
again. 

" i We have lost our pains this time,' he said : 6 there is 
a party of French, of fully five times our number, not half 
a mile away/ The captain, on the news, wasn't slow, as 
you may think, in ordering us off; and, hastily gathering 
up our blankets and the contents of our knapsacks, we 
struck across the sand just as the sun was setting. There 
is scarce any twilight in Egypt, master: it is pitch dark 
twenty minutes after sunset. The first part of the evening, 
too, is infinitely disagreeable. The days are burning hot, 
and not a cloud can be seen in the sky ; but no sooner has 
the sun gone down, than there comes on a thick white fog, 



252 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

that covers the whole country, so that one can't see fifty 
yards around ; and so icy cold is it, that it strikes a chill 
to the very heart. It is with these fogs that the dews 
descend ; and deadly things they are. Well, the mist and 
the darkness came upon us at once : we lost all reckoning ; 
and after floundering on for an hour or so among the sand- 
hills, our captain called a halt, and bade us burrow as we 
best might among the hollows. Hungry as we were, w^ 
were fain to leave our supper to begin the morning with, 
and huddled all together into what seemed a deep, dry 
ditch. We were at first surprised, master, to find an im- 
mense heap of stone under us : we couldn't have lain 
harder had we lain on a Scotch cairn ; and that, d'ye see, 
is unusual in Egypt, where all the sand has been blown 
by the hot winds from the desert, hundreds of miles away, 
and where, in the course of a few days' journey, one mayn't 
see a pebble larger than a pigeon's egg. There were hard, 
round, bullet-like masses under us, and others of a more 
oblong shape, like pieces of wood that had been cut for 
fuel ; and, tired as we were, their sharp points, protruding 
through the sand, kept most of us from sleep. But that 
was little, master, to what we felt afterwards. As we began 
to take heat together, there broke out among us a most 
disagreeable stench, — bad at first, and unlike anything I 
had ever felt before, but at last altogether overpowering. 
Some of us became dead sick, and some, to show how 
much bolder they were than the rest, began to sing. One- 
half the party stole away one by one, and lay down outside. 
For my own part, master, I thought it was the plague that 
was breaking out upon us from below, and lay still, in 



BILL WHYTE. 253 

despair of escaping it. I was wretchedly tired too \ and, 
despite of my fears and the stench, I fell asleep, and slept 
till daylight. But never before, master, did I see such a 
sight as when I awoke. We had been sleeping on the 
carcases of ten thousand Turks, whom Bonaparte had 
massacred about a twelvemonth before. There were eye- 
less skulls grinning at us by hundreds from the side of the 
ditch, and black, withered hands and feet sticking out, 
with the white bones glittering between the shrunken 
sinews. The very sand, for roods around, had a brown 
ferruginous tinge, and seemed baked into a half-solid mass 
resembling clay. It was no place to loiter in; and you 
may trust me, master, we breakfasted elsewhere. Bill kept 
close to our captain all that morning. He didn't much 
like him, even so early in their acquaintance as this, — 
no one did, in fact ; but he was anxious to learn from him 
all he could regarding the colonel. He told him, too, 
something about his own early recollections ; but he 
would better have kept them to himself. From that 
hour, master, Captain Turpic never gave him a pleasant 
look, and sought every means to ruin him. 

" We joined the army again on the evening of the 20th 
March. You know, master, what awaited us next morn- 
ing. I had been marching, on the day of our arrival, 
for twelve hours under a very hot sun, and was fatigued 
enough to sleep soundly. But the dead might have 
awakened next morning. The enemy broke in upon 
us about three o'clock. It was pitch-dark. I had been 
dreaming, at the moment, that I was busily engaged in 
the landing, fighting in the front rank beside Bill ; and I 



254 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

awoke to hear the enemy outside the tent struggling in 
fierce conflict with such of my comrades as, half-naked and 
half-armed, had been roused by the first alarm, and had 
rushed out to oppose them. You will not think I was 
long in joining them, master, when I tell you that Bill 
himself was hardly two steps ahead of me. Colonel 
Westhope was everywhere at once that morning, bringing 
his men, in the darkness and the confusion, into some, 
thing like order, — threatening, encouraging, applauding, 
issuing orders, — all in a breath. Just as we got out, 
the French broke through beside our tent, and ^we saw 
him struck down in the throng. Bill gave a tremendous 
cry of ' Our colonel ! our colonel !' and struck his pike 
up to the cross into the breast of the fellow who had given 
the blow. And hardly had that one fallen than he sent 
it crashing through the face of the next foremost, till it 
lay buried in the brain. The enemy gave back for a 
moment ; and as he was striking down a third, the colonel 
got up, badly wounded in the shoulder ; but he kept the 
field all day. He knew Bill the moment he rose, and 
leant on him till he had somewhat recovered. ' I shall 
not forget, Bill/ he said, 'that you have saved your 
colonel's life.' We had a fierce struggle, master, ere we 
beat out the French; but, broken and half-naked as we 
were, we did beat them out, and the battle became general. 
" At first the flare of the artillery, as the batteries blazed 
out in the darkness, dazzled and blinded me ; but I loaded 
and fired incessantly, and the thicker the bullets went 
whistling past me, the faster I loaded and fired. A spent 
shot, that had struck through a sand- bank, came rolling on 



BILL WHYTE. 255 

like a bowl, and, leaping up from a hillock in front, struck 
me on the breast. It was such a blow, master, as a man 
might have given with his fist ; but it knocked me down, 
and ere I got up, the company was a few paces in advance. 
The bonnet of the soldier who had taken my place came 
rolling to my feet ere I could join them. But, alas ! it was 
full of blood and brains, and I found that the spent shot 
had come just in time to save my life. Meanwhile, the 
battle raged with redoubled fury on the left, and we in the 
centre had a short respite ; and some of us needed it. For 
my own part, I had fired about a hundred rounds, and my 
right shoulder was as blue as your waistcoat. 

" You will wonder, master, how I should notice such a 
thing in the heat of an engagement ; but I remember 
nothing better than that there was a flock of little birds 
shrieking and fluttering over our heads for the greater part 
of the morning. The poor little things seemed as if robbed 
of their very instinct by the incessant discharges on every 
side of them; and, instead of pursuing a direct course, 
which would soon have carried them clear of us, they kept 
fluttering in helpless terror in one little spot. About mid- 
day, an aide-de-camp went riding by us to the right. 

" ' How goes it? how goes it ?' asked one of our officers. 

" 6 It is just who will/ replied the aide-de-camp, and 
passed by like lightning. Another followed hard after. 

" * How goes it now ?' inquired the officer. 

" ' Never better, boy ! said the second rider. ' The forty- 
second have cut Bonaparte's invincibles to pieces, and all 
the rest of the enemy are falling back !' 

" We came more into action a little after. The enemy 



256 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

opened a heavy fire upon us, and seemed advancing to the 
charge, I had felt so fatigued, master, during the previous 
pause, that I could scarcely raise my hand to my head ; but, 
now that we were to be engaged again, all my fatigue left 
me, and I found myself grown fresh as ever. There were 
two field-pieces to our left that had done noble execution 
during the day ; and Captain Turpic's company, including 
Bill and me, were ordered to stand by them in the expected 
charge. They were wrought mostly by seamen from the 
vessels, — brave, tight fellows, who, like Nelson, never saw 
fear ; but they had been so busy, that they had shot away 
most of their ammunition ; and as we came up to them, 
they were about despatching a party to the rear for 
more. 

" ' Right,' said Captain Turpic ; * I don't care though I 
lend you a hand, and go with you/ 

" i On your peril, sir !' said Bill Whyte. i What ! leave 
your company in the moment of the expected charge ! I 
shall assuredly report you for cowardice and desertion of 
quarters if you do.' 

" ' And I shall have you broke for mutiny/ said the cap- 
tain, e How can these fellows know how to choose their 
ammunition without some one to direct them? 9 

" And so off he went to the rear with the sailors ; but 
though they returned, poor fellows, in ten minutes or so, 
we saw no more of the captain till evening. On came the 
French in their last charge. Ere they could close with us, 
the sailors had fired their field-pieces thrice, and we could 
see wide avenues opened among them with each discharge. 
But on they came. Our bayonets crossed and clashed 



BILL WHYTE. 257 

with theirs for one half-minute ; and in the next they were 
hurled headlong down the declivity, and we were fighting 
among them pell-mell. There are few troops superior to 
the French, master, in a first attack, but they want the 
bottom of the British ; and, now that we had broken them 
in the moment of their onset, they had no chance with us, 
and we pitched our bayonets into them as if they had been 
so many sheaves in harvest. They lay in some places three 
and four tiers deep, for our blood was up, master. Just as 
they advanced on us, we had heard of the death of our 
general, and they neither asked for quarter nor got it. Ah, 
the good and gallant Sir Ralph ! We all felt as if we had 
lost a father ; but he died as the brave best love to die. 
The field was all our own, and not a Frenchman remained 
who was not dead or dying. That action, master, fairly 
broke the neck of their power in Egypt. 

" Our colonel was severely wounded, as I have told you, 
early in the morning ; but, though often enough urged to 
retire, he had held out all day, and had issued his orders 
with all the coolness and decision for which he was so 
remarkable ; but now that the excitement of the fight was 
over, his strength failed him at once and he had to be 
carried to his tent. He called for Bill to assist in bearing 
him off. I believe it was merely that he might have an 
opportunity of speaking to him. He told him that whether 
he died or lived he would take care that he should be pro- 
vided for. He gave Captain Turpic charge, too, that he 
should keep a warm side to Bill. I overheard our major 
say to the captain, as we left the tent, ' Good heavens ! 
did you ever see two men liker one another than the 

R 



258 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

colonel and our new sergeant V But the captain carelessly 
remarked that the resemblance didn't strike him. 

" We met outside with a comrade. He had had a cousin 
in the forty-second, he said, who had been killed that morn- 
ing, and he was anxious to see the body decently buried, 
and wished us to go along with him ; and so we both went. 
It is nothing, master, to see men struck down in warm 
blood, and when one's own blood is up ; but, oh! 'tis a 
grievous thing, after one has cooled down to one's ordinary 
mood, to go out among the dead and the dying. We 
passed through what had been the thick of the battle. The 
slain lay in hundreds and thousands, — like the ware and 
tangle on the shore below us, — horribly broken, some of 
them, by the shot, and blood and brains lay spattered on 
the sand. But it was a worse sight to see, when some 
poor wretch, who had no chance of living an hour longer, 
opened his eyes as we passed, and cried out for water. 
We soon emptied our canteens, and then had to pass on. 
In no place did the dead lie thicker than where the forty- 
second had engaged the invincibles, and never were there 
finer fellows. They lay piled in heaps, — the best men of 
Scotland over the best men of France, — and their wounds, 
and their number, and the postures in which they lay, 
showed how tremendous the struggle had been. I saw 
one gigantic corpse with the head and neck cloven through 
the steel cap to the very brisket. It was that of a French- 
man ; but the hand that had drawn the blow lay cold and 
stiff not a yard away, with the broadsword still firm in its 
grasp. A little farther on we found the body we sought. 
It was that of a fair young man ; the features were as com- 



BILL WHYTE. 259 

posed as if he were asleep ; there was even a smile on the 
lips \ but a cruel cannon-shot had torn the very heart out of 
the breast. Evening was falling. There was a little dog 
whining and whimpering over the body, aware, it would 
seem, that some great ill had befallen its master, but yet 
tugging from time to time at his clothes that he might rise 
and come away. 

" l Ochon, ochon ! poor Evan M'Donald !' exclaimed 
our comrade ; ' what would Christy Ross, or your good old 
mother, say to see you lying here !' 

" Bill burst out a-crying as if he had been a child, and I 
couldn't keep dry-eyed neither, master. But grief and pity 
are weaknesses of the bravest natures. We scooped out a 
hole in the sand with our bayonets and our hands, and, 
burying the body, came away. 

"The battle of the 21st broke, as I have said, the 
strength of the French in Egypt ; for though they didn't 
surrender to us until about five months after, they kept 
snug behind their walls, and we saw little more of them. 
Our colonel had gone aboard of the frigate, desperately 
ill of his wounds, — so ill, that it was several times reported 
he was dead ; and most of our men were suffering sadly 
from sore eyes ashore. But such of us as escaped had 
little to do, and we contrived to while away the time agree- 
ably enough. Strange country, Egypt, master. You know, 
our people have come from there ; but, trust me, I could 
find none of my cousins among either the Turks or the 
Arabs. The Arabs, master, are quite the gipsies of Egypt ; 
and Bill and I — but he paid dearly for them afterwards, 
poor fellow — used frequently to visit such of their straggling 



260 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

tribes as came to the neighbourhood of our camp. You 
and the like of you, master, are curious to see our people, 
and how we get on; and no wonder; and we were just 
as curious to see the Arabs. Toward evening they used 
to come in from the shore or the desert in parties of ten 
or twelve ; and wild-looking fellows they were, — tall, but 
not very tall, — thin, and skinny, and dark ; and an amazing 
proportion of them blind of an eye — an effect, I suppose, 
of the disease from which our comrades were suffering so 
much. In a party of ten or twelve, — and their parties 
rarely exceeded a dozen, — we found that every one of them 
had some special office to perform. One carried a fishing- 
net, like a herring have ; one, perhaps, a basket of fish, 
newly caught ; one a sheaf of wheat ; one a large copper 
basin, or rather platter; one a bundle of the dead boughs 
and leaves of the date-tree ; one the implements for lighting 
a fire ; and so on. The first thing they always did, after 
squatting down in a circle, was to strike a light; the next, 
to dig a round pot-like hole in the sand in which they 
kindle their fire. When the sand had become sufficiently 
hot, they threw out the embers, and placing the fish, just as 
they had caught them, in the bottom of the hole, heaped 
the hot sand over them, and the fire over that. The sheaf 
of wheat was next untied, and each taking a handful, held 
it over the flame till it was sufficiently scorched, and then 
rubbed out the grain between their hands into the copper 
plate. The fire was then drawn off a second time, and 
the fish dug out; and, after rubbing off the sand, and 
taking out the bowels, they sat down to supper. And such, 
master, was the ordinary economy of the poorer tribes, 



BILL WHYTE. 261 

that seemed drawn to the camp merely by curiosity. Some 
of the others brought fruit and vegetables to our market, 
and were much encouraged by our officers. But a set of 
greater rascals never breathed. At first several of our 
men got flogged through them. They had a trick of 
raising a hideous outcry in the market-place for every 
trifle, — certain, d'ye see, of attracting the notice of some 
of our officers, who were all sure to take part with them. 
The market, master, had to be encouraged at all events , 
and it was some time ere the tricks of the rascals were 
understood in the proper quarter. But, to make short, 
Bill and I went out one morning to our walk. We had 
just heard, — and heavy news it was to the whole regiment, 
— that our colonel was despaired of, and had no chance 
of seeing out the day. Bill was in miserably low spirts. 
Captain Turpic had insulted him most grossly that morn- 
ing. So long as the colonel had been expected to recover, 
he had shown him some degree of civility; but he now 
took every opportunity of picking a quarrel with him. 
There was no comparison in battle, master, between Bill 
and the captain ; for the captain, I suspect, was little better 
than a coward ; but then there was just as little on parade 
the other way ; for Bill, you know, couldn't know a great 
deal, and the captain was a perfect martinet. He had 
called him vagrant and beggar, master, for omitting some 
little piece of duty. Now, he couldn't help having been 
with us, you know; and as for beggary, he had never 
begged in his life. Well, we had walked out towards the 
market, as I say. 

" ' It's all nonsense. Jack/ says he, ' to be so dull on the 



262 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

matter; I'll e'en treat you to some fruit. I have a Sicilian 
dollar here. See that lazy fellow with the spade lying in 
front, and the burning mountain smoking behind him : we 
must see if he can't dig out for us a few grans' worth of 
dates.' 

" Well, master, up he went to a tall, thin, rascally- . 
looking Arab, with one eye, and bought as much fruit 
from him as might come to one-tenth of the dollar which 
he gave him, and then held out his hand for the change. 
But there was no change forthcoming. Bill wasn't a man 
to be done out of his cash in that silly way, and so he 
stormed at the rascal ; but he, in turn, stormed as furiously 
in his own lingo at him, till at last Bill's blood got up, 
and, seizing him by the breast, he twisted him over his 
knee, as one might a boy of ten years or so. The fellow 
raised a hideous outcry, as if Bill were robbing and mur- 
dering him. Two officers, who chanced to be in the 
market at the time, came running up at the noise. One 
of them was the scoundrel Turpic ; and Bill was laid hold 
of, and sent off under guard to the camp. Poor fellow, he 
got scant justice there. Turpic had procured a man-of- 
war's-man, who swore, as he well might, indeed, that Bill 
was the smuggler who had swamped the Kirkcudbright 
custom-house boat There was another brought forward, 
who swore that both of us were gipsies, and told a blasted 
rigmarole story, without one word of truth in it, about the 
stealing of a silver spoon. The Arab had his story too, 
in his own lingo ; and they received every word ; for 
my evidence went for nothing. I was of a race who 
never spoke the truth, they said, — as if I wern't as good 



BILL WHYTE* 263 

as a Mohammedan Arab. To crown all, in came Turpic's 
story about what he called Bill's mutinous spirit in the 
action of the 21st. You may guess the rest, master. 
The poor fellow was broke that morning, and told that, 
were it not in consideration of his bravery, he would have 
got a flogging into the bargain. 

" I spent the evening of that day with Bill outside the 
camp, and we ate the dates together that in the morning 
had cost him so dear. The report had gone abroad — 
luckily a false one — that our colonel was dead j and that 
put an end to all hope with the poor fellow of having his 
case righted. We spoke together for, I am sure, two hours 
— spoke of Bill's early recollections, and of the hardship of 
his fate all along. And it was now worse with him, he said, 
than it had ever been before. He spoke of the strange, 
unaccountable hostility of Turpic; and I saw his brow grow 
dark, and the veins of his neck swell almost to bursting. 
He trusted they might yet meet, he said, where there would 
be none to note who was the officer and who the private 
soldier. I did my best, master, to console the poor fellow, 
and we parted. The first thing I saw as I opened the 
tent-door next morning, was Captain Turpic, brought into 
the camp by the soldier whose cousin Bill and I had 
assisted to bury. The captain was leaning on his shoulder, 
somewhat less than half alive, as it seemed, with four of his 
front teeth struck out, and a stream of blood all along his 
vest and small clothes. He had been met with by Bill, 
who had attacked him, he said, and, after breaking his 
sword, would have killed him had not the soldier come up 
and interfered. But that, master, was the captain's story. 



264 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

The soldier told me afterwards that he saw the captain 
draw his sword ere Bill lifted hand at all ; and that, when 
the poor fellow did strike, he gave him only one knock- 
down blow on the mouth that laid him insensible at his 
feet; and that, when down, though he might have killed 
him twenty times over, he didn't so much as crook a finger 
on him. Nay, more : Bill offered to deliver himself up to 
the soldier, had not the latter assured him that he would to 
a certainty be shot, and advised him to make off. There 
was a. party despatched in quest of him, master, the moment 
Turpic had told his story ; but he was lucky enough, poor 
fellow, to elude them; and they returned in the evening 
just as they had gone out. And I saw no more of Bill in 
Egypt, master. 

" Never had troops less to do than we had, for the six 
months or so we afterwards remained in the country ; and 
time hung wretchedly on the hands of some of us. Now 
that Bill was gone, I had no comrade with whom I cared 
to associate ; and, as you may think, I often didn't know 
what to do with myself. After all our fears and regrets, 
master, our colonel recovered, and one morning about four 
months after the action came ashore to see us. We were 
sadly pestered with flies, master. I have seen, I am sure, a 
bushel of them on the top of our tent at once. They 
buzzed all night by millions round our noses, and many a 
plan did we think of to get rid of them ; but, after destroy- 
ing hosts on hosts, they still seemed as thick as before. I 
had fallen on a new scheme this morning. I placed some 
sugar on a board, and surrounded it w r ith gunpowder ; and, 
when the flies had settled by thousands on the sugar, I fired 



BILL WHYTE. 265 

the powder by means of a train, and the whole fell dead on 
the floor of the tent. I had just got a capital shot, when up 
came the colonel, and sat down beside me. 

" ' I wish to know/ he said, ' all you can tell me about 
Bill Whyte. You were his chief friend and companion, I 
have heard, and are acquainted with his early history. Can 
you tell me aught of his parentage?' 

" ' Nothing of that, colonel/ I said ; ' and yet I have 
known Bill almost ever since he knew himself.' 

" And so, master, I told him all that I knew, — how Bill 
had been first taken to us by my mother ; of the purse of 
gold she had brought with her which had kept us all so 
merry; and of the noble spirit he had shown among us 
when he grew up. I told him, too, of some of Bill's early 
recollections; of the scarlet dress trimmed with silver, 
which had been brought to his mind by the sergeant's coat 
the first day he wore it; of the gentleman and lady, too, 
whom he remembered to have lived with; and of the 
supposed resemblance he had found between the former 
and the colonel. The colonel, as I went on, was strangely 
agitated, master. He held an open letter in his hand, and 
seemed every now and then to be comparing particulars ; 
and when I mentioned Bill's supposed recognition of him, 
he actually started from off his seat. 

"'Good Heavens!' he exclaimed, 'why was I not brought 
acquainted with this before?' 

" I explained the why, master, and told him all about Cap- 
tain Turpic ; and he left me with, you may be sure, no very 
favourable opinion of the captain. But I must now tell you, 
master, a part of my story, which I had but from hearsay. 



266 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

"The colonel had been getting over the worse effects of 
his wound when he received a letter from a friend in 
England, informing him that his brother-in-law, the father 
of Captain Turpic, had died suddenly, and that his sister, 
who to all appearance was fast following, had been making 
strange discoveries regarding an only son of the colonel's, 
who was supposed to have been drowned about seventeen 
years before. The colonel had lost both his lady and 
child by a frightful accident. His estate lay near Qlney, 
on the banks of the Ouse ; and the lady one day, during 
the absence of the colonel, who was in London, was taking 
an airing in the carriage with her son, a boy of three years 
or so, when the horses took fright, and, throwing the 
coachman, who was killed on the spot, rushed into the 
river. The Ouse is a deep sluggish stream, dark and 
muddy in some of the more dangerous pools, and mantled 
over with weeds. It was into one of these the carriage 
was overturned; assistance came too late, and the unfor- 
tunate lady was brought out a corpse; but the body of 
the child was nowhere to be found. It now came out, 
however, from the letter, that the child had been picked 
up unhurt by the colonel's brother-in-law, who, after 
concealing it for nearly a week during the very frenzy 
of the colonel's distress, had then given it to a gipsy. 
The rascal's only motive — he was a lawyer, master — was, 
that his own son, the captain, who was then a boy of 
twelve years or so, and not wholly ignorant of the circum- 
stance, might succeed to the colonel's estate. The writer 
of the letter added that, on coming to the knowledge of 
this singular confession, he had made instant search after 



BILL WHYTE. 267 

the gipsy to whom the child had been given and had 
been fortunate enough to find her, after tracing her over 
half the kingdom, in a cave near Fortrose, in the north of 
Scotland. She had confessed all; stating, however, that 
the lad, who had borne among the tribe the name of Bill 
Whyte, and had turned out a fine fellow, had been outlawed 
for some smuggling feat about eighteen months before, 
and had enlisted with a young man, her son, into a regi- 
ment bound for Egypt. You see, master, there couldn't be 
a shadow of doubt that my comrade, Bill Whyte, was just 
Henry Westhope, the colonel's son and heir. But the 
grand matter was where to find him. Search as we might, 
all search was in vain : we could trace him no farther than 
outside the camp to where he had met with Captain 
Turpic. I should tell you, by the way, that the captain 
was now sent to Coventry by every one, and that not an 
officer in the regiment would return his salute. 

"Well, master, the months passed, and at length the 
French surrendered ; and, having no more to do in Egypt, 
we all re-embarked and sailed for England. The short 
peace had been ratified before our arrival ; and I, who had 
become heartily tired of the life of a soldier now that I 
had no one to associate with, was fortunate enough to 
obtain my discharge. The colonel retired from the ser- 
vice at the same time. He was as kind to me as if he had 
been my father, and offered to make me his forester, if I 
would but come and live beside him ; but I was too fond 
of a w r andering life for that. He was corresponding, he 
told me, with every British consul within fifteen hundred 
miles of the Nile ; but he had heard nothing of Bill, master. 



268 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

Well, after seeing the colonel's estate, I parted from him 
and came north, to find out my people, which I soon did ; 
and for a year or so I lived with them just as I have been 
doing since. I was led in the course of my wanderings to 
Leith, and was standing one morning on the pier among a 
crowd of people, who had gathered round to see a fine 
vessel from the Levant that was coming in at the time, 
when my eye caught among the sailors a man exceedingly 
like Bill. He was as tall, and even more robust, and he 
wrought with all Bill's activity ; but for some time I could 
not catch a glimpse of his face. At length, however, he 
turned round, and there sure enough was Bill himself. I 
was afraid to hail him, master, not knowing who among the 
crowd might also know him, and know him also as a de- 
serter or an outlaw ; but you may be sure I wasn't long in 
leaping aboard and making up to him. And we were soon 
as happy, master, in one of the cellars of the Coal Hill, as 
we had been all our lives before. 

" Bill told me his history since our parting. He had left 
the captain lying at his feet, and struck across the sand in 
the direction of the Nile, one of the mouths of which he 
reached next day. He there found some Greek sailors, 
who were employed in watering ; and, assisting them in 
their work, he was brought aboard their vessel, and en- 
gaged as a seaman by the master who had lost some of 
his crew by the plague. As you may think, master, he soon 
became a prime sailor and continued with the Greeks, 
trading among the islands of the Archipelago for about 
eighteen months, when, growing tired of the service, and 
meeting with an English vessel, he had taken a passage 



BILL WHYTE. 269 

home. I told him how much ado we had all had about 
him after he had left us, and how we were to call him Bill 
Whyte no longer. And so, in short, master, we set out 
together for Colonel Westhope's. 

" In our journey we met with some of our people on a 
wild moor of Cumberland, and were invited to pass the 
night with them. They were of the Curlit family ; but you 
will hardly know them by that. Two of them had been 
with us when Bill swamped the custom-house boat. They 
were fierce, desperate fellows, and not much to be trusted 
by their friends even ; and I was afraid that they might 
have somehow come to guess that Bill had brought some 
clinkers home with him. And so, master, I would fain 
have dissuaded him from making any stay with them in the 
night time — for I did not know, you see, in what case we 
might find our weasands in the morning ; but Bill had no 
fears of any kind, and was, besides, desirous to spend one 
last night with the gipsies ; and so he stayed. The party 
had taken up their quarters in a waste house on the moor, 
with no other human dwelling within four miles of it. 
There was a low, stunted wood on the one side, master, 
and a rough sweeping stream on the other : the night, too, 
was wild and boisterous ; and, what between suspicion and 
discomfort, I felt wellnigh as drearily as I did when lying 
among the dead men in Egypt. We were nobly treated, 
however, and the whisky flowed like water ; but we drank 
no more than was good for us. Indeed, Bill was never a 
great drinker; and I kept on my guard and refused the 
liquor on the plea of a bad head. I should have told you 
that there were but three of the Curlits — all of them raw- 



270 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

boned fellows, however, and all of them of such stamp that 
the three have since been hung. I saw they were sounding 
Bill ; but he seemed aware of them. 

" ' Ay, ay,' says he, ' I have made something by my 
voyaging, lads, though, mayhap, not a great deal. What 
think you of that there now, for instance ?' drawing, as 
he spoke, a silver-mounted pistol out of each pocket : 
' these are pretty pops and as good as they are pretty; 
the worst of them sends a bullet through an inch-board at 
twenty yards.' 

" ' Are they loaded, Bill? ' asked Tom Curlit. 

" 'To be sure,' said Bill, returning them again, each to 
its own pouch. ' What is the use of an empty pistol ? ' 

" ' Ah,' replied Tom, ' I smell a rat, Bill. You have given 
over making war on the king's account, and have taken 
the road to make war on your own. Bold enough, to be 
sure.' 

" From the moment they saw the pistols, the brothers 
seemed to have changed their plan regarding us — for some 
plan I am certain they had, They would now fain have 
taken us into partnership with them ; but their trade was a 
woundy bad one, master, with a world more of risk than 
profit. 

" 'Why, lads,' said Tom Curlit to Bill and me, 'hadn't 
you better stay with us altogether ? The road won't do in 
these days at all. No, no ; the law is a vast deal over 
strong for that, and you will be tucked up like dogs for 
your very first affair. But if you stay with us, you will get 
on in a much quieter way on this wild moor here. Plenty 
of game. Bill ; and sometimes, when the nights are long, 



BILL WHYTE. 271 

we contrive to take a purse with as little trouble as may be. 
We had an old pedlar only three weeks ago, that brought 
us sixty good pounds. By the way, brothers, we must 
throw a few more sods over him, for I nosed him this 
morning as I went by. And, lads, we have something in 
hand just now that, with to be sure a little more risk, 
wall pay better still. Two hundred yellow boys in hand, 
and five hundred more when our work is done. Better ' 
that, Bill, than standing to be shot at for a shilling per 
day.' 

" ' Two hundred in hand, and five hundred more when 
you have done your work !' exclaimed Bill. ' Why, that is 
sure enough princely pay, unless the work be very bad 
indeed. But come, tell us what you propose. You can't 
expect us to make it a leap-in-the-dark matter.' 

" ' The work is certainly a little dangerous/ said Tom, 
* and we of ourselves are rather few ; but if you both join 
with us, there would be a vast deal less of danger indeed. 
The matter is just this : A young fellow, like ourselves, has 
a rich old uncle who has made his will in his favour ; but 
then he threatens to make another will that won't be so 
favourable to him by half; and you see the drawing across 
of a knife — so — would keep the first one in force; and 
that is all we have to do before pocketing the blunt ; but 
then the old fellow is as brave as a lion, and there are two 
servants with him, worn-out soldiers like himself, that 
w T ould, I am sure, be rough customers. With your help, 
however, we shall get on primely. The old boy's house 
stands much alone ; and we shall be five to three.' 

" ' Well, well/ said Bill ; ' we shall give your proposal a 



272 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

night's thought, and tell you what we think of it in the 
morning. But remember, no tricks, Tom ! If we engage 
in the work, we must go share and share alike in the 
booty.' 

" \ To be sure/ said Tom ; and so the conversation 
closed. 

" About eight o'clock or so, master, I stepped out to the 
door. The night was dark and boisterous as ever, and 
there had come on a heavy rain. But I could see that, 
dark and boisterous as it was, some one was approaching 
the house with a dark lantern. I lost no time in telling the 
Curlits so. 

" ' It must be the captain/ said they, ' though it seems 
strange that he should come here to-night. You must 
away, Jack and Bill, to the loft, for it mayn't do for the 
captain to find you here, but you can lend us a hand after- 
wards should need require it/ 

" There was no time for asking explanations, master ; 
and so up we climbed to the loft, and had got snugly con- 
cealed among some old hay when in came the captain. 
But what captain think you ? Why, just our old acquaint- 
ance, Captain Turpic ! 

" l Lads/ he said to the Curlits, ' make yourselves ready; 
get your pistols. Our old scheme is blown, for the colonel 
has left his house at Olney on a journey to Scotland ; but 
he passes here to night, and you must find means to stop 
him, — now or never ! ' 

" ' What force and what arms has he with him, captain ?' 
asked Tom. 

" c The coachman, his body servant, and himself/ said 



BILL WHYTE. 273 

the captain ; ' but only the servant and himself are armed. 
The stream outside is high to-night ; you must take them 
just as they are crossing it, and thinking of only the water ; 
and, whatever else you may mind, make sure of the 
colonel.' 

" i Sure as I live/ said Bill to me, in a low whisper, ' 'tis 
a plan to murder Colonel Westhope ! And, good heavens !' 
he continued, pointing through an opening in the gable, 
1 yonder is his carnage, not a mile away. You may see the 
lantern, like two fiery eyes, coming sweeping along the 
moor. We have no time to lose ; let us slide down 
through the opening, and meet with it.' 

"As soon done as said, master; we slid down along the 
turf gable ; crossed the stream, which had risen high on its 
banks, by a plank-bridge for foot-passengers ; and then 
dashed along the broken road in the direction of the car- 
riage. We came up to it as it was slowly crossing an open 
drain. 

" ' Colonel Westhope ! } I cried, ' Colonel Westhope ! — 
stop ! — stop ! — turn back ! You are waylaid by a party of 
ruffians, who will murder you if you go on.' 

" The door opened, and the colonel stepped out, with 
his sword under his left arm, and a cocked pistol in his 
hand. 

" < Is not that Jack Whyte ? ' he asked. 

" ' The same, noble colonel,' I said ; ( and here is Henry, 
your son.' 

" It was no place or time, master, for long explanations ; 
there was one hearty congratulation, and one hurried em- 
brace ; and the colonel, after learning from Bill the number 



274 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

of the assailants and the plan of the attack, ordered the 
carriage to drive on slowly before, and followed, with us 
and his servant on foot, behind. 

" ' The rascals/ he said, " will be so dazzled with the flare 
of the lanterns in front, that we will escape notice till they 
have fired, and then we shall have them for the picking 
down/ 

" And so it was, master. Just as the carriage was enter- 
ing the stream, the coachman was pulled down by Tom 
Curlit; at the same instant, three bullets went whizzing 
through the glasses, and two fellows came leaping out from 
behind some furze to the carriage-door. A third, whom I 
knew to be the captain, lagged behind. I marked him, 
however ; and when the colonel and Bill were disposing of 
the other two, — and they took them so sadly by surprise, 
master, that they had but little difficulty in throwing them 
down and binding them, — I was lucky enough to send a 
piece of lead through the captain. He ran about twenty 
yards, and then dropped down, stone dead. Tom escaped 
us ; but he cut a throat some months after, and suffered for 
it at Carlisle. And his two brothers, after making a clean 
breast and confessing all, were transported for life. But 
they found means to return in a few years after, and were 
both hung on the gallows on which Tom had suffered before 
them. 

"I have not a great deal more to tell you, master. The 
colonel has been dead for the last twelve years, and his son 
has succeeded him in his estate. There is not a completer 
gentleman in England than Henry Westhope, master, nor a 
finer fellow. I call on him every time I go round, and 



BILL WHYTE. 275 

never miss a hearty welcome; though, by the by, I am 
quite as sure of a hearty scold. He still keeps a snug little 
house empty for me, and offers to settle on me fifty pounds 
a-year, whenever I choose to give up my wandering life, 
and go and live with him. But what 's bred in the bone 
won't come out of the flesh, master, and I have not yet 
closed with his offer. And really, to tell you my mind, I 
don't think it quite respectable. Here I am, at present a 
free, independent tinker, — no man more respectable than a 
tinker, master, — all allow that; whereas, if I go and live 
with Bill, on an unwrought-for fifty pounds a-year, I will be 
hardly better than a mere master-tailor or shoemaker. No, 
no, that would never do ! Nothing like respectability, 
master, let a man fare as hard as he may." 

I thanked the gipsy for his story, and told him I thought 
it almost worth while putting into print. He thanked me, 
in turn, for liking it so well, and assured me I was quite 
at liberty to put it in print as soon as I chose. And so I 
took him at his word. 

" But yonder/ 5 said he, " is the moon rising, red and 
huge, over the three tops of Belrinnes, and throwing, as it 
brightens, its long strip of fire across the frith. Take care 
of your footing, just as you reach the top of the crag : there 
?s an awkward gap there on the rock edge, that reminds me 
of an Indian trap ; but as for the rest of the path, you will 
find it quite as safe as by day. Good-bye." 

I left him, and made the best of my way home, where, 
while the facts were fresh in my mind, I committed to 
paper the gipsy's story. 



THE YOUNG SURGEON. 

There is a little runnel in the neighbourhood of the town 

of , which, rising amid the swamps of a mossy 

hollow, pursues its downward way along the bottom of a 
deep-wooded ravine ; and so winding and circuitous is the 
course which, in the lapse of ages, it has worn for itself 
through a subsoil of stiff diluvial clay, that, ere a late pro- 
prietor lined its sides with garden-flowers and pathways 
covered with gravel, and then willed that it should be 
named the " Ladies' Walk," it was known to the towns- 
people as the Crook Burn. It is a place of abrupt angles 
and sudden turns. We see that, when the little stream first 
leaped from its urn, it must have had many a difficulty to 
encounter, and many an obstacle to overcome; but they 
have all been .long since surmounted; and when in the 
heat of summer we hear it tinkling through the pebbles 
with a sound so feeble that it hardly provokes the chirp of 
the robin, and see that, even where it spreads widest to the 
light, it presents a too narrow space for the gambols of the 
water-spider, we marvel how it could ever have scooped 
out for itself so capacious a bed. But what will not cen- 
turies of perseverance accomplish ! The tallest trees that 
rise beside it, — and there are few taller in the country, — 



THE YOUNG SURGEON. 277 

scarcely overtop its banks ; and, as it approaches the parish 
burying-ground, for it passes close beside the wall, we 
may look down from the fields above on the topmost 
branches, and see the magpie sitting on her nest. This 
little stream, so attenuated and thread-like during the 
droughts of July and August, and which, after every 
heavier shower, comes brawling from its recesses, red- 
dened by a few handfuls of clay, has swept to the sea, 
in the long unreckoned succession of ages, a mass mighty 
enough to have furnished the materials of an Egyptian 
pyramid. 

In even the loneliest windings of the Crook Burn we find 
something to remind us of the world. Every smoother 
trunk bears its inscription of dates and initials ; and to one 
who has resided in the neighbouring town, and mingled 
freely with the inhabitants, there is scarcely a little cluster 
of characters he meets with that has not its story. Human 
nature is a wonderful thing, and interesting in even its 
humblest appearances to the creatures who partake of it; 
nor can the point from which one observes it be too near, 
or the observations themselves too minute. It is perhaps 
best, however, when we have collected our materials, to 
combine and arrange them at some little distance. We are 
always something more than mere observers ; — we possess 
that which we contemplate, with all its predilections and all 
its antipathies; and there is dimness or distortion in the 
mirror on which we catch the features of our neighbours, if 
the breath of passion has passed over it. Do we not see 
that the little stream beside us gives us a faithful picture of 
what surrounds it only w r hen it is at rest ? And it is well, 



278 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

if we desire to think correctly, and in the spirit of charity, 
of our brother men, that we should be at rest too. For our 
own part, we love best to think of the dead when their 
graves are at our feet, and our feelings are chastened by the 
conviction that we ourselves are very soon to take our place 
beside them. We love to think of the living, not amid the 
hum and bustle of the world, when the thoughts are hurried, 
and perhaps the sterner passions aroused; but in the soli- 
tude of some green retreat, — by the side of some unfre- 
quented stream, — when drinking largely of the beauty and 
splendour of external things, and feeling that we ourselves 
are man, — in nature and destiny the being whom we con- 
template. There is nought of contempt in the smile to 
which we are provoked by the eccentricities of a creature 
so strange and wilful, nor of bitterness in the sorrow with 
which we regard his crimes. 

In passing one of the trees, a smooth-rinded ash, we see 
a few characters engraved on it, which at the first glance we 
deem Hebrew, but which we find, on examination, to belong 
to some less known alphabet of the east. There hangs a 
story of these obscure characters, which, though little 
chequered by incident, has something very interesting 
in it. It is of no distant date; — the characters, in all 
their minuter strokes, are still unfilled ; but the hand that 
traced them, and the eye that softened in expression as it 
marked the progress of the work, — for they record the 
name of a lady-love, — are now mingled with the clods of 
the valley. 

Early in an autumn of the present century, — and we need 
not be more explicit, for names and dates are no way essen- 



THE YOUNG SURGEON. 279 

tial to what we have to relate, — a small tender entered the 

bay of : — , and cast anchor in the roadstead, where 

she remained for nearly two months. Our country had 
been at peace with all the world for years before, and the 
arts which accompany peace had extended their softening 
influence to our seamen, — a class of men not much marked 
in the past, as a body at least — though it had produced a 
Dampier and a Falconer — for aught approaching to literary 
acquirement, or the refinement of their manners. And the 
officers of this little vessel were no unfavourable specimens 
of the more cultivated class. They were in general well- 
read ; and possessing, with the attainments, the manners of 
gentlemen, were soon on terms of intimacy with some of 
the more intelligent inhabitants of the place. There was 
one among them, however, whose society was little courted. 
He was a young and strikingly handsome man, with bright, 
speaking eyes, and a fine development of forehead; but the 
higher parts of his nature seemed more than balanced by 
the lower ; and, though proud-spirited and honourable, he 
was evidently sinking into a hopeless degradation, — the 
slave of habits which strengthen with indulgence, and 
which already seemed too strong to be overcome. 

He accompanied, on two or three occasions, some of his 
brother officers when engaged in calling on their several 
acquaintances of the place. The grosser traits of his char- 
acter had become pretty generally known, and report had 
as usual rather aggravated than lessened them. There was 
something whispered of a low intrigue in which he was said 
to have been engaged — something, too, of those disreput- 
able habits of solitary indulgence in which the stimulating 



2So TALES AND SKETCHES. 

agent is recklessly and despairingly employed to satisfy for 
the moment the ever-recurring cravings of a depraved 
appetite, and which are regarded as precluding the hope 
of reform; and he seemed as if shunned by every one. 
His high spirit, however, though it felt neglect, could sup- 
port him under it : he was a keen satirist, too, like almost 
all men of talent, who, thinking and feeling more correctly 
than they live, wreak on their neighbours the unhappiness 
of their own remorse; and he could thus neutralise the 
bitterness of his feelings by the bitterness of his thoughts. 
But with every such help one cannot wholly dispense with 
the respect of others, unless one be possessed of one's own; 
and when a lady of the place, who on one occasion saw and 
pitied his chagrin, invited him to pass an evening at her 
house with a small party of friends, the feeling awakened 
by her kindness served to convince him that he was less 
indifferent than he could have wished to the. coldness of the 
others. His spirits rose in the company to which he was 
thus introduced ; he exerted his powers of pleasing, and 
they were of no ordinary description, — for, to an imagina- 
tion of much liveliness, he added warm feelings and an 
exquisite taste; and, on rising to take his leave for the 
evening, his hostess, whose interest in him was heightened 
by pity, and whose years and character secured her from 
the fear of having her motives misconstrued, kindly urged 
him to repeat his visit every time he thought he could not 
better employ himself, or when he found it irksome or 
dangerous to be alone. And her invitation was accepted 
in the spirit in which it was given. 

She soon became acquainted with his story. He had 



THE YOUNG SURGEON. 281 

lost his mother when very young, and had been bred up 
under the care of an elder brother, with an eye to the 
church ; but his inclinations interfering as he grew up, the 
destination was altered, and he applied himself to the study 
of medicine. He had passed through college in a way 
creditable to his talents, and on quitting it he seemed 
admirably fitted to rise in the profession which he had 
made choice of; for, to very superior acquirements and 
much readiness of resource, he added a pleasing address, 
and a soft, winning manner. There seemed, however, to 
be something of a neutralising quality in the moral consti- 
tution of the man. He was honest, and high-spirited, and 
ready to oblige ; but there was a morbid restlessness in his 
feelings, which, languishing after excitement as its proper 
element, rendered him too indifferent to those ordinary 
concerns of life which seem so tame and little when regarded 
singly, but which prove of such mighty importance in the 
aggregate. There was, besides, an unhappy egotism in the 
character, which led him to regard himself as extraordinary, 
the circumstances in which he was placed as common, and 
therefore unsuited, and which, instead of exciting him to 
the course of legitimate exertion through which men of 
talent rise to their proper sphere, spent itself in making 
out ingenious cases of sorrow, and apologies for unhappi- 
ness, from very ordinary events, and a condition of life in 
which thousands attain to contentment. One might almost 
suppose that that sense of the ludicrous — bestowed on the 
species undoubtedly for wise ends — which finds its proper 
vocation in detecting and exposing incongruities of this 
kind, could not be better employed than in setting such 



282 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

a man right. It would have failed in its object, however, 
and certain it is, that geniuses of the very first order, who 
could have rendered us back our ridicule with fearful 
interest, have been of nearly the same disposition with the 
poor surgeon — creatures made up of idiosyncrasies and 
eccentricities. A similar turn was attended with unhappi- 
ness in Byron and Rousseau; and such is the power of 
true genius over the public mind, however fantastic its 
vagaries, that they had all Europe to sympathise with 
them. 

The poor surgeon experienced no such sympathy. The 
circumstances, too, in which he had been reared were well- 
nigh as unfavourable as his disposition ; nor had they at 
all improved as he grew up. The love of a mother might 
have nursed the feelings of so delicate a mind and fitted 
them for the world ; for, as in dispositions of a romantic 
cast, the affections are apt to wander after the unreal and 
the illusive, and to become chilled and crippled in the 
pursuit, it is well that they should be prepared for resting 
on real objects, by the thousand kindlinesses of this first 
felt and tenderest relation. But his mother he had lost in 
infancy. His brother, though substantially kind, had a 
way of saying bitter things — not unprovoked, perhaps — 
which, once heard, were never forgotten. He was now 
living among strangers, who, to a man of his temper, were 
likely to remain such — without friends or patron, and 
apparently out of the reach of promotion. And, to sum up 
the whole, he was a tender and elegant poet, for he had 
become skilful in the uncommunicable art, and had learned 
to give body to his emotions and colour to his thoughts; 



THE YOUNG SURGEON. 283 

but, though exquisitely alive to the sweets of fame, he was 
of all poets the most obscure and nameless. With a 
disposition so unfortunate in its peculiarities, — with a 
groundwork, too, of strong animal passion in the character, 
— he strove to escape from himself by means revolting to 
his better nature, and which ultimately more than doubled 
his unhappiness. To a too active dislike of his brother 
men, — for he was infinitely more successful in finding 
enemies than friends, — there was now added a sickening 
disgust of himself : habit produced its usual effects ; and he 
found he had raised to his assistance a demon which he 
could not lay, and which threatened to destroy him. 

We insert a finished little poem, the composition of this 
stage, in which he portrays his feelings, and which may 
serve to show, were any such proof needed, that gross 
habits and an elegant taste are by no means incom- 
patible. 

Fain would I seek in scenes more gay, 

That pleasure others find, 
And strive to drown in revelry 

The anguish of the mind. 

But still, where'er I go, I bear 

The marks of inward pain ; 
The lines of misery and care 

Are written in my brain. 

I cannot raise the cheerful song, 

Nor frolic with the free, 
Nor mingle in the dance among 

The sons of mirth and glee. 

For there 's a spell upon my soul, 
A secret anguish there, 



284 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

A grief which I can not control, 
A deep corroding care. 

And do not ask me why I sigh, — 
Draw not the veil aside ; 

Though dark, 'tis fairer to the eye 
Than that which it would hide. 



The downward progress of the young surgeon, ere it re- 
ceived the ultimate check which restored him to more than 
the vantage-ground of his earliest years, was partially ar- 
rested by a circumstance more efficient in suspending the 
influence of the grosser habits than any other which occurs 
in the ordinary course of things. When in some of the 
southern ports of England, he had formed an attachment 
for a young and beautiful lady of great delicacy of senti- 
ment and a highly cultivated mind, and succeeded in 
inspiring her with a corresponding regard. Who is not 
acquainted with Dryden's story of Cymon ? It may be a 
harder matter, indeed, to unfix deeply-rooted habits than 
merely to polish the manners ; but we are the creatures of 
motive; and there is no appetite, however unconquerable 
it may appear when opposed by only the dictates of judg- 
ment or conscience, but what yields to the influence of a 
passion more powerful than itself. To the young surgeon 
his attachment for this lady proved for a time the guiding 
motive and the governing passion; the effect was a tem- 
porary reform, a kind of minor conversion, which, though the 
work of no undying spirit, seemed to renovate his whole 
moral nature ; and had he resided in the neighbourhood of 
his lady-love, it is probable that, during at least the term of 
his courtship, all his grosser appetites would have slept. 



THE YOUNG SURGEON. 285 

But absence, though it rather strengthens than diminishes 
a true attachment, frequently lessens its moral efficiency, by 
forming, as it were, a craving void in the heart, which old 
habits are usually called upon to fill. The philosopher of 
Rousseau solaced himself with his bottle when absent from 
his mistress; — the poor fellow whose story I attempt to 
relate returned in a similar way to most of his earlier indul- 
gences when separated from his. And yet never was there 
lover more thoroughly attached, or whose affection had less 
of earth in it. His love seemed rather an abstraction of 
the poet than based on the passions of the man ; and, 
coloured by the taste and delicacy of his intellectual nature, 
it might be conceived of as a sort of religion, exquisitely 
fervent in its worship, and abounding in gorgeous visions — 
the phantoms of a vigorous fancy, conjured up by a too 
credulous hope. Nor did it lack its dedicatory inscriptions 
or its hymns. Almost the only cheerful verses he ever 
wrote were his love ones \ the others were filled with a kind 
of metaphysical grief — shall we call it ? — common to our 
literature since the days of Byron and Shelley, but which 
seems to have been unknown to either Burns or Shakespeare. 
The surgeon, however, was no mere imitator, — no mere 
copyist of unfelt and impossible sorrows. His pieces, like 
all the productions of the school to which they belonged, 
included nearly the usual amount of false thought and sen- 
timent ; but the feeling which had dictated them was not a 
false one. Had he lived better, he would have written 
more cheerfully. It is with the mind often as with the body : 
it is not always in the main seat of disease that the symptoms 
proper to the disease are exhibited ; nor does it need any 



286 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

very extensive acquaintance with our nature to know that 
real remorse often forms the groundwork of an apparently 
fictitious sorrow. 

Another poem, of somewhat the same stamp as the 
former, we may insert here. It is in the handwriting of 
the young surgeon, among a collection of his pieces, but is 
marked " Anonymous." We have never met with it else- 
where ; and as it bears upon it the impress of this singular 
poung man's mind, and is powerfully expressive of the 
gloom in which he loved to enshroud himself, and of the 
deep bitterness which is the only legitimate fruit of a life of 
sinful pleasure, we may shrewdly guess that it can be the 
production of no one else. It is entitled 

THE MOURNER. 

I do not sigh 
That I catch not the glance of woman's eye : 
I am weary of woman : I know too well 
How the pleasant smiles of the love-merchant sell, 
To waste one serious thought on her, 
Though I've been, like others, a worshipper. 
I do not sigh for the silken creature : 
The tinge of good in her milky blood 
Marks not her worth, but her feebler nature. 

I do not pine 
That the treasures of India are not mine : 
I have feasted on all that gold could buy ; 
I have drain' d the fount men call pleasure dry, 
And I feel the after-scorch of pain 
On a lip that would not drink again. 
Oh ! wealth on me were only wasted : 
I am far above the usurer's love ; 
And all other love on earth I 've tasted. 

I do not weep 
That apart from the noble my walk I keep, — 



THE YOUNG SURGEON. 287 

That the name I bear shall never be set 

'Mid the gems of fame's sparkling coronet ; 

That I shall slink, with the meanest clay, 

To a hasty grave as mean as they. 

Oh ! the choice of a sepulchre does not grieve me : 

I have that within a name might win, 

And a tomb, — if such things could deceive me. 

I do not groan 
That I life's poison-plant have known, — 
That in my spirit's drunkenness 
I ate of its fruit of bitterness, 
Nor knew, until it was too late, 
The ills that on such banquet wait. 
'Tis not for this I cherish sadness : 
I've taught my heart to endure the smart 
Produced by my youth's madness. 

But I do sigh, 
And deeply, darkly pine, weep, groan, — ^and why? 
Because with unclouded eye I see 
Each turn in human destiny, 
The knowledge of which w T ill not depart, 
But lingers and rankles in my heart ; — 
Because it is my chance to know 
That good and ill, — that weal and woe, — 
Are words that Nothing mean below ; — 
Because all earth can't buy a morrow, 
Or draw from breath, or the vital breath, 
Aught but uncertainty and sorrow. 

This strange poem he read to his elderly friend, with the 
evident purpose of eliciting some criticism. While admit- 
ting its power, she protested against its false philosophy, — 
the result of a distorted vision, in its turn the result of 
a perverted life. By way of attempting to strike out a 
healthier vein of sentiment, she begged him to furnish her 
with an answer. With this request he complied ; but the 
production, although with glimpses of true poetry, and with 



238 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

the same power over rhythm, has, as might be expected, 
the air of something made to order. It is as follows : — 

ANSWER TO THE MOURNER. 

I daily sigh 
That I meet not the glance of my lady's eye. 
I am weary of absence : I know too well 
How lonely and tiresome the dull hours tell, 
Not to wish every moment to be with her 
Of whom I have long been the worshipper. 
Oh, how I long for the lovely creature ! 
The olive bud at the general Flood 
To the patriarch sailor was not sweeter. 

I often pine 
That the gifts of fortune are not mine, 
Yet covet not wealth from the wish to taste 
The enervating sweets of thoughtless waste. 
The slave of pleasure I scorn to be, 
And the usurer's love has no charms for me. 
I wish but an easy competence, 
With a pound to lend to a needy friend, 
But I care not for splendid affluence. 

I sometimes weep 
That I with the lowly my walk must keep : 
I would that my humble name were set 
In the centre of Fame's bright coronet, 
That my tomb might be deck'd with a gorgeous stone, 
And the tears of the virtuous shed thereon. 
Oh ! the thoughts of death should never grieve me, 
Could I stamp my name with a spotless fame, 
And a garland of deathless roses weave me. 

I deeply groan 
When I think on the follies my youth has known, — 
When the still small voice of conscience brings 
Before me the mem'ry of bygone things, 
And its softest whisper appals me more 
Than the earthquake's crash or the thunder's roar ; 



THE YOUNG SURGEON. 289 

And my sorrow is deeper, because I know 
That neither from chance nor from ignorance, 
But with open eyes, I have wander'd so. 

I murmur not 
That the volume of fate to man is shut, — 
That he is forbidden with daring eye 
Into its mysteries to pry. 

Content with the knowledge that God has given, 
I seek not to fathom the plans of Heaven ; 
I believe that good may be found below ; 
And that evil is tasted, alas ! I know : 
Yet I trust there 's a balm for every woe, — 
That the saddest night will have a morrow ; 
And I hope through faith to live after death, 
In a world that knows nor sin nor sorrow. 

The truest answer to the mourner was, however, yet to 
come. 

It is not the least faulty among men that are most suc- 
cessful in interesting us in their welfare. A ruin often 
awakens deeper emotions than the edifice, however noble, 
could have elicited when entire ; and there is something in 
a broken and ruined character, if we can trace in it the 
lineaments of original beauty and power, that inspires us 
with similar feelings. The friend of the young surgeon felt 
thus : he was in truth a goodly ruin, in which she saw much 
to admire and much to regret ; and, impressed by a serious 
and long-cherished belief in the restorative efficacy of reli- 
gion, her pity for him was not unmixed with hope. She 
had treated him on every occasion with the kindness of a 
mother; and now, with the affection and freedom proper 
to the character, she pressed on his consideration the im- 
portant truths which she knew concerned him most deeply. 
He listened with a submissive and respectful attention, — 



290 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

the effect, doubtless, of those feelings with which he must 
have regarded one so disinterestedly his friend ; for the 
subject could not have been introduced to his notice under 
circumstances more favourable. The sense of obligation 
had softened his heart ; the respectful deference which he 
naturally paid to the sex and character of his friend pre- 
pared him rather to receive than to challenge the truths 
which she urged on his acceptance ; the conviction that a 
heartfelt interest in his welfare furnished her only motive, 
checked that noiseless though fatal under-current of objec- 
tion, which can defeat in so many cases an end incontro- 
vertibly good by fixing on it the imputation of sinister 
design ; and, above all, there was a plain earnestness in her 
manner, the result of a deep-seated belief, which, disdain- 
ing the niceties of metaphysical speculation, spoke more 
powerfully to his conscience than it could have done had 
it armed itself with half the arguments of the schools. 
Rarely does mere argument bring conviction to an ingen- 
ious mind fertile in doubts and objections. Conscience 
sleeps when the rationative faculty contends for victory, — a 
thing it is seldom indifferent to ; and a few perhaps ingen- 
ious sophisms prove the only fruits of the contest. 

The little vessel lay in , as I have said, for 

about two months, when she received orders to sail for the 
south of England ; a storm arose, and she was forced by 
stress of weather into Aberdeen. From this place the sur- 
geon first wrote to his friend. His epistolary style, like his 
poetry, was characterised by an easy elegance ; and there 
was no incident which he related, however trifling in itself, 
which did not borrow some degree of interest from his pen. 



THE YOUNG SURGEON. 291 

He relates, in one of his earlier letters, that, in a solitary 
ramble in the neighbourhood of Aberdeen, he came to a 
picturesque little bridge on the river Don. He had rarely- 
seen a prettier spot ; there were rocks, and trees, and a 
deep dark stream ; and he stood admiring it till there 
passed a poor old beggar, of whom he inquired the name 
of the bridge. " It is called," said the mendicant, " the 
brig of Don ; but in my young days it was better known as 
the brig of Balgownie ; and if you be a Scotchman, perhaps 
you have heard of it, for there are many prophecies about 
it by Thomas the Rhymer." "Ah," exclaimed the sur- 
geon, " ' Balgownie brig's black wa !' And so I have been 
admiring, for its own sake, the far-famed scene of Byron's 
boyhood. I cannot tell you," he adds, " what I felt on the 
occasion. It was perhaps lucky for me that I had not 
much money in my pocket, but the little that I had made 
the old man happy." 

Our story hastens abruptly to its conclusion. During 
the following winter and the early part of spring, the little 
tender was employed in cruising in the English Channel 
and the neighbourhood of Jersey; and from the latter 
place most of the surgeon's letters to his friend were ad- 
dressed. They relate the progress of an interesting and 
highly-important change in a mind of no ordinary character. 
There was an alteration effected in the very tone of his 
intellect ; it seemed, if I may so express myself, as if strung 
less sharply than before, and more in accordance with the 
realities of life. Even his love appeared as if changed into 
a less romantic but tenderer passion, that sought the 
welfare of its object even more than the object itself. But 



292 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

it was in his moral nature — in those sentiments of the man 
which look forward and upward — that the metamorphosis 
seemed most complete. When a powerful mind first 
becomes the subject of serious impressions, there is some- 
thing in Christianity suited to take it by surprise. When 
viewed at a distance, and with that slight degree of 
attention which the great bulk of mankind are contented 
to bestow on the religion which God revealed, there seems 
a complex obscurity in its peculiar doctrines, which con- 
trasts strongly with the simplicity of its morals. It seems 
to lie as unconformdbly (if we may employ the metaphor) 
as some of the deductions of the higher sciences, to what is 
termed the common sense of mankind. It seems at first 
sight, for instance, no very rational inference that the white- 
ness of light is the effect of a harmonious mixture of colour, 
or that the earth is confined to its orbit by the operations 
of the same law which impels a falling pebble towards the 
ground. And to the careless, because uninterested ob- 
server, such doctrines as the doctrine of the Fall and the 
Atonement appear rational in as slight a degree. But when 
Deity himself interposes, — when the heart is seriously 
affected, — when the Divine law holds up its mirror to the 
conscience, and we begin to examine the peculiar doctrines 
in a clearer light, and from a nearer point of observation, — 
they at once seem to change their character, — to assume so 
stupendous a massiveness of aspect, — to discover a pro- 
fundity so far beyond every depth of a merely human 
philosophy, — to appear so wonderfully fitted to the nature 
and to the wants of man, — that we are at once convinced 
their author can be no other than the adorable Being who 



THE YOUNG SURGEON. 293 

gave light and gravitation to the universe which He willed 
to exist. The young surgeon had a mind capacious enough 
to be impressed by this feeling of surprise. He began to 
see, and to wonder he had missed seeing it before, that 
Christianity is in keeping, if we may so speak, with the 
other productions of its Author ; that to a creature solely 
influenced by motive, no moral code, however perfect, can 
be efficient in directing or restraining, except through its 
connexion with some heart-influencing belief, — that it is 
essential to his nature as man that he meet with a corres- 
ponding nature in Deity, — a human nature like his own, — 
and that he must be conscious of owing to Him more than 
either his first origin or his subsequent support, or any of 
the minor gifts which he shares in common with the inferior 
animals, and which cost the Giver a less price than was 
paid on Calvary. It is unnecessary to expatiate on the 
new or altered feelings which accompanied the change, or 
to record the processes of a state of mind described by so 
many. The surgeon, in his last letter to his friend, dwelt 
on these with an earnest yet half-bashful delight, that, while 
it showed how much they engrossed him, showed also how 
new it w r as to him either to experience or describe them. 

The next she received regarding him recorded his death. 
It was written at his dying request by a clergyman of 
Jersey. He had passed a day, early in April, in the cabin 
of the little vessel, engaged with his books and his pen ; to- 
wards evening he went on deck ; and, in stepping on the 
quay, missed his footing and fell backwards. The spine 
sustained a mortal injury in the fall. He was carried by 
the unskilful hands of sailors to lodgings in the town of St 



294 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

Helier's, a distance of five miles. During this long and 
painful transport, he was, as he afterwards said, conscious, 
although speechless, and aware that if he had been placed 
in an easier position, with his head better supported, he 
might have a chance of recovery. Yet he never gave 
expression to a single murmur. Besides the clergyman, he 
was fortunate enough to be assiduously attended by some 
excellent friends whom he had made on occasion of a 
former visit of his vessel to the same port. These he kept 
employed in reading the Scriptures aloud by night and by 
day. As he had formerly drunk deeply of the fount men 
call pleasure, he now drank insatiably at the pure Fount of 
Inspiration. "It is necessary to stop," one of his kind 
attendants would say; "your fever is rising." "It is only," 
he would reply, with a smile, "the loss of a little blood 
after you leave." He lingered thus for about four weeks 
in hopeless suffering, but in the full possession of all his 
mental faculties, till death came to his relief, and he 
departed full of the hope of a happy immortality. The last 
tie that bound him to the world was his attachment to the 
lady whose name, so obscurely recorded, has introduced 
his story to the reader. But as death neared, and the 
world receded, he became reconciled to the necessity of 
parting from even her. His last request to the clergyman 
who attended him was, that after his decease he should 

write to his friend in , and say, " that if, as he trusted, 

he entered a sinner saved into glory, he would have to 
bless her, as being under God the honoured instrument 
of mercy." 



A TRUE STORY 



OF THE 



LIFE OF A SCOTCH MERCHANT 

OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



CHAPTER I. 

General Remarks — Trade of trie North of Scotland about the beginning 
of the last Century — James Forsyth, a Native of Moray, settles in 
Cromarty as a Shopkeeper — His Eldest Son William — The Old 
Parish School— Scheme of Education pursued at the Period — Its 
Origin and Effects — Education of William Forsyth. 

It is according to the fixed economy of human affairs that 
individuals should lead, and that masses should follow ; for 
the adorable Being who wills that the lower order of minds 
should exist by myriads, and produces the higher so rarely, 
has willed also, by inevitable consequence, that the many 
should be guided by the few. On the other hand, it is not 
less in accordance with the dictates of His immutable jus- 
tice, that the interests of the few should be subordinate to 
the more extended interests of the many. The leading 
minds are to be regarded rather as formed for the masses, 



296 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

than the masses for them. True it is, that while the one 
principle acts with all the undeviating certainty of a natural 
law, the other operates partially and interruptedly with all 
the doubtful efficiency of a moral one ; and hence those 
long catalogues of crimes committed against the species by 
their natural leaders, which so fill the pages of history. We 
see man as the creature of destiny conforming unresistingly 
to the one law, — as a free agent, accountable for all his 
actions, yielding an imperfect and occasional obedience to 
the other. And yet his duty and his true interest, were he 
but wise enough to be convinced of it, are in every case the 
same. The following chapters, as they contain the history 
of a mind of the higher order, that, in doing good to others, 
conferred solid benefits on itself, may serve simply to illus- 
trate this important truth. They may serve, too, to show 
the numerous class whose better feelings are suffered to 
evaporate in idle longings for some merely conceivable field 
of exertion, that wide spheres of usefulness may be fur- 
nished by situations comparatively unpromising. They 
may afford, besides, occasional glimpses of the beliefs, 
manners, and opinions of an age by no means remote 
from our own, but in many respects essentially different 
from it in spirit and character. 

The Lowlanders of the north of Scotland were beginning, 
about the year 1700, gradually to recover the effects of that 
state of miserable depression into which they had been 
plunged for the greater part of the previous century. 
There was a slow awakening of the commercial spirit 
among the more enterprising class of minds, whose destiny 
it is to move in the van of society as the guides and pioneers 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 297 

of the rest. The unfortunate expedition of Darien had 
dissipated wellnigh the entire capital of the country only a 
few years before, and ruined almost all the greater mer- 
chants of the large towns. But the energies of the people, 
now that they were no longer borne down by the wretched 
despotism of the Stuarts, were not to be repressed by a 
single blow. Almost every seaport and larger town had its 
beginnings of trade. Younger sons of good family, who 
w r ould have gone, only half a century before, to serve as 
mercenaries in the armies of the Continent, w r ere learning 
to employ themselves as merchants at home. And almost 
every small town had its shopkeeper, who, after passing the 
early part of his life as a farmer or mechanic, had set him- 
self, in the altered state of the country, to acquire the habits 
of a new profession, and employed his former savings in 
trade. 

Among these last was James Forsyth, a native of the 
province of Moray. He had spent the first thirty years of 
his life as a mason and builder. His profession was a 
wandering one, and he had received from nature the ability 
of profiting by the opportunities of observation which it 
afforded. He had marked the gradual introduction among 
the people of new tastes for the various articles of foreign 
produce and manufacture which were beginning to flow 
into the kingdom, and had seen how large a proportion the 
profits of the trader bore — as they always do in the infancy 
of trade — to the amount of capital employed. Resigning, 
therefore, his old profession, he opened a small shop in the 
town of Cromarty, whose lucrative herring-fishery rendered 
it at this period one of the busiest little places in the north 



298 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

of Scotland. And as he was at once steady and enter- 
prising, rigidly just in his dealings, and possessed of shrewd 
good sense, he had acquired, ere the year 1722, when his 
eldest son William, the subject of the following memoir, 
was born to him, what at that period was deemed consider- 
able wealth. His marriage had taken place somewhat late 
in life, little more than a twelvemonth before. 

William received from nature what nature only can be- 
stow — great force of character, and great kindliness of heart. 
The town of Cromarty at the time was singularly fortunate 
in its schoolmaster, Mr David M'Culloch — a gentleman 
who terminated a long and very useful life, many years 
after, as the minister of a wild Highland parish in Perth- 
shire ; and William, who in infancy even had begun to 
manifest that restless curiosity which almost always charac- 
terises the dawn of a superior intellect, was placed at a very 
early age under his care. The school — one of Knox's 
strongholds of the Reformation — was situated in a retired 
wooded corner behind the houses, with the windows, which 
were half-buried in the thatch, opening to the old time-worn 
castle of Cromarty. There could not be a more formidable 
spectre of the past than the old tower. It had been from 
time immemorial the seat of the hereditary sheriffs of the 
district, whose powers at this period still remained entire ; 
and its tall narrow front of blind wall, its embattled turrets, 
and hanging bartisans, seemed associated with the tyranny 
and violence of more than a thousand years. But the low, 
mean-looking building at the foot of the hill was a masked 
battery raised against its authority, which was to burst open 
its dungeon-door, and to beat down its gallows. There is 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 299 

a class — the true aristocracy of nature — which have but to 
arise from among the people that the people may be free ; 
and the humble old school did its part in separating its due 
proportion of these from the mass. Of two of the boys 
who sat at the same form with William Forsyth, one, the 
son of the town-clerk, afterwards represented the county in 
Parliament ; and the other, of still humbler parentage, at- 
tracted, many years after, when librarian of the University 
of Edinburgh and Professor of Oriental Languages, the 
notice of the far-known Dr Samuel Johnson. 

The scheme of tuition established in our Scotch schools 
of this period was exactly that which had been laid down 
by Knox and Craig, in the Book of Discipline, rather more 
than a century and a half before. Times had altered, how- 
ever ; and though still the best possible, perhaps, for minds 
of a superior order, it was no longer the best for intellects 
of the commoner class. The scheme drawn up by our first 
Reformers was stamped by the liberality of men who had 
learned from experience that tyranny and superstition derive 
their chief support from ignorance. Almost all the know- 
ledge which books could supply at the time was locked up 
in the learned languages. It was appointed, therefore, 
u that young men who purposed to travill in some handi- 
craft or other profitable exercise for the good of the com- 
monwealth should first devote ane certain time to grammar 
and the Latin tongue, and ane certain time to the other 
tongues and the study of philosophy." But what may have 
been a wise and considerate act on the part of the ancestor 
may degenerate into merely a foolish custom on the part of 
the descendant. Ere the times of Mr M'Culloch, we had 



300 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

got a literature of our own; and if useful knowledge be 
learning, men might have become learned through an ac- 
quaintance with English reading alone. Our fathers, how- 
ever, pursued the course which circumstances had rendered 
imperative in the days of their great-grandfathers, merely 
because their great-grandfathers had pursued it; and the 
few years which were spent in school by the poorer pupils 
of ordinary capacity were absurdly frittered away in acquir- 
ing a little bad Latin and a very little worse Greek. So 
strange did the half-learning of our common people, derived 
in this way, appear to our southern neighbours, that there 
are writers of the last century who, in describing a Scotch 
footman or mechanic, rarely omit making his knowledge ot 
the classics an essential part of the character. The barber 
in " Roderick Random " quotes Horace in the original ; 
and Foote, in one of his farces, introduces a Scotch valet, 
who, when some one inquires of him whether he be a 
Latinist, indignantly exclaims, " Hoot awa, man ! a Scotch- 
man and no understand Latin \" 

The school of Cromarty, like the other schools of the 
kingdom, produced its Latinists who caught fish and made 
shoes; and it is not much more than twenty years since the 
race became finally extinct. I have heard stories of an old 
house-painter of the place, who, having survived most of his 
schoolfellows and contemporaries, used to regret among 
his other vanished pleasures the pleasure he could once 
derive from an inexhaustible fund of Latin quotation, which 
the ignorance of a younger generation had rendered of little 
more value to him than the paper-money of an insolvent 
bank ; and I remember an old cabinetmaker, who was in 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 301 

the practice, when his sight began to fail him, of carrying 
his Latin New Testament with him to church as it chanced 
to be printed in a clearer type than any of his English ones. 
It is said, too, of a learned fisherman of the reign of Queen 
Anne, that, when employed one day among his tackle, he 
was accosted in Latin by the proprietor of Cromarty, who, 
accompanied by two gentlemen from England, was saunter- 
ing along the shore, and that, to the surprise of the strangers, 
he replied with considerable fluency in the same language. 
William Forsyth was a Latinist like most of his school- 
fellows 1 but the natural tone of his mind, and the extent of 
his information, were in keeping with the acquirement; 
and while there must have been something sufficiently 
grotesque and incongruous, as the satirists show us, in the 
association of a classic literature with humble employments 
and very ordinary modes of thought and expression, no- 
thing, on the other hand, could have seemed less so than 
that an enterprising and liberal-minded merchant should 
have added to the manners and sentiments of the gentle- 
man the tastes and attainments of the scholar. 



302 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 



CHAPTER II. 

William Forsyth, on quitting School, is placed in a Counting- House in 
London — Returns again to Cromarty on the Death of his Father — 
Depressed State of Trade in the Place — Apathetical Indolence of 
the People — Failure of the Herring Fishery, and the means taken 
by Mr Forsyth to restore it — Originates a Bounty on Herrings — 
Imports and Exports of the Period — First Introduction of Coal 
into the Place — Rebellion of 1 745 — Mr Forsyth brought a Prisoner 
to Inverness by the Rebels. 

William Forsyth, in his sixteenth year, quitted school, 
and was placed by his father in a counting-house in London, 
where he formed his first acquaintance with trade. Cir- 
cumstances, however, rendered the initiatory course a very 
brief one. His father, James Forsyth, died suddenly in the 
following year, 1739; and, leaving London at the request 
of his widowed mother, whose family now consisted of two 
other sons and two daughters — all of them, of course, 
younger than himself — he entered on his father's business 
at the early age of seventeen. In one interesting instance 
I have found the recollection of his short stay in London 
incidentally connected with the high estimate of his char- 
acter and acquirements formed by one of the shrewdest and 
most extensively-informed of his mercantile acquaintance. 
il I know," says a lady who has furnished me with some of 
the materials of these chapters, " that Mr Forsyth must 
have spent some time in a London counting-house, from 
often having heard my father repeat, as a remark of the late 
Henry Davidson of Tulloch, that, ' had the Cromarty mer- 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 303 

chant remained in the place where he received his first 
introduction to business, he would have been, what no 
Scotchman ever was, Lord Mayor of London.'" I need 
hardly add, that the remark is at least half a century old. 

The town of Cromarty, at the time of Mr Forsyth's 
settlement in it, was no longer the scene of busy trade 
which it had been twenty years before. The herring-fishery 
of the place, at one time the most lucrative on the eastern 
coast of Scotland, had totally failed, and the great bulk of 
the inhabitants, who had owed to it their chief means of 
subsistence, had fallen into abject poverty. They seemed 
fast sinking, too, into that first state of society in which 
there is scarce any division of labour: the mechanics in 
the town caught their own fish, raised their own corn, 
tanned their own leather, and wore clothes which had 
employed no other manufacturers than their own families 
and their neighbour the weaver. There was scarce any 
money in the district : even the neighbouring proprietors 
paid their tradesmen in kind ; and a few bolls of malt or 
barley, or a few stones of flax or wool, settled the yearly 
account. There could not, therefore, be a worse or more 
hopeless scene for the shopkeeper; and had William 
Forsyth restricted himself to the trade of his father, he 
must inevitably have sunk with the sinking fortunes of the 
place. Young as he was, however, he had sagacity enough 
to perceive that Cromarty, though a bad field for the retail 
trader, might prove a very excellent one for the merchant 
Its valuable though at this time neglected harbour seemed 
suited to render it, w T hat it aftenvards became, the key of 
the adjacent country. The neighbouring friths, too, — those 



304 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

of Dingwall, Dornoch, and Beauly, which wind far into the 
Highlands of Ross and Sutherland, — formed so many broad 
pathways leading into districts which had no other roads at 
that period ; and the towns of Tain> Dornoch, Dingwall, 
Campbeltown, and Fortrose, with the seats of numerous 
proprietors, are situated on their shores. The bold and 
original plan of the young trader, therefore, was to render 
Cromarty a sort of depot for the whole, to furnish the 
shopkeepers of the several towns with the commodities in 
which they dealt, and to bring to the very doors of the 
proprietors the various foreign articles of comfort and 
luxury with which commerce could alone supply them* 
And, launching boldly into the speculation at a time when 
the whole country seemed asleep around him, he purchased 
a freighting boat for the navigation of the three friths, and 
hired a large sloop for trading with Holland and the com- 
mercial towns of the south. 

The failure of the herring-trade of the place had been 
occasioned by the disappearance of the herrings, which, 
after frequenting the frith in immense shoals for a long 
series of years, had totally deserted it. It is quite accord- 
ing to the nature of the fish, however, to resume their visits 
as suddenly and unexpectedly as they have broken them 
off, though not until after the lapse of so many seasons, 
perhaps, that the fishermen have ceased to watch for their 
appearance in their old haunts, or to provide the tackle 
necessary for their capture ; and in this way a number of 
years are sometimes suffered to pass, after the return of the 
fish, ere the old trade is re-established. To guard against 
any such waste of opportunity on the part of his town's- 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 305 

people was the first care of William Forsyth, after creating, 
as it were, a new and busy trade for himself; and, repre- 
senting the case to the more intelligent gentlemen of the 
district, and some of the wealthier merchants of Inverness, 
he succeeded in forming them into a society for the encour- 
agement of the herring-fishery, which provided a yearly 
premium of twenty marks Scots for the first barrel of 
herrings caught every season in the Moray Frith. The 
sum was small ; but as money at the time was very valu- 
able, it proved a sufficient inducement to the fishermen and 
tradespeople of the place to fit out a few boats about the 
beginning of autumn every year, to sweep over the various 
fishing banks for the herrings ; and there were few seasons 
in which some one crew or other did not catch enough to 
entitle them to the premium. At length, however, their 
tackle wore out; and Mr Forsyth, in pursuance of his 
scheme, provided himself, at some little expense, with a 
complete drift of nets, which were carried to sea each 
season by his boatmen, and the search kept up. His exer- 
tions, however, could only merit success, without securing 
it. The fish returned for a few seasons in considerable 
bodies, and several thousand barrels were caught ; but they 
soon deserted the frith as entirely as before ; and more 
than a century elapsed from their first disappearance ere 
they revisited their old haunts with such regularity and in 
such numbers as to render the trade remunerative to either 
the curers or the fishermen. 

Unlike the herring speculation, however, the general 
trade of William Forsyth w r as eminently successful. It 

was of a miscellaneous character, as became the state of a 

u 



306 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

country so poor and so thinly peopled, and in which, as 
there was scarce any division of labour, one merchant had 
to perform the work of many. He supplied the proprietors 
with teas, and wines, and spiceries, with broad-cloths, glass, 
delft ware, Flemish tiles, and pieces of japanned cabinet- 
work : he furnished the blacksmith with iron from Sweden, 
the carpenter with tar and spars from Norway, and the 
farmer with flax-seed from Holland. He found, too, in 
other countries markets for the produce of our own. The 
exports of the north of Scotland at this period were mostly 
malt, wool, and salmon. Almost all rents were paid in 
kind or in labour, the proprietors retaining in their own 
hands a portion of their estates, termed demesnes or mains, 
which was cultivated mostly by their tacksmen and feuars 
as part of their proper service. Each proprietor, too, had 
his storehouse or girnel, — a tall narrow building, the strong- 
box of the time, which, at the Martinmas of every year, 
was filled from gable to gable with the grain-rents paid to 
him by his tenants, and the produce of his own farm. His 
surplus cattle found their way south, under the charge of 
the drovers of the period ; but it proved a more difficult 
matter to dispose to advantage of his surplus corn, mostly 
barley, until some one more skilful in speculation than the 
others originated the scheme of converting it into malt, and 
exporting it into England and Flanders. And to so great 
an extent was this trade carried on about the middle of the 
last century, that in the town of Inverness the English, 
under Cumberland, in the long-remembered year of Cul- 
loden, found almost every second building a malt-barn. 
The town of Cromarty suffered much at this period, in 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 307 

at least the severer winters, from scarcity of fuel. The 
mosses of the district were just exhausted ; and as our pro- 
prietors had not yet betaken themselves to planting, there 
were no woods, except in some of the remoter recesses of 
the country, where the remains of some of the ancient 
forests were still suffered to survive. Peats were occasion- 
ally brought to the town in boats from the opposite side of 
the frith ; but the supply was precarious and insufficient, 
and the inhabitants were content at times to purchase the 
heath of the neighbouring hill in patches of a hundred 
square yards, and at times even to use for fuel the dried 
dung of their cattle. " A Cromarty fire" was a term used 
over the country to designate a fire just gone out ; and some 
humorist of the period has represented a Cromarty farmer, 
in a phrase which became proverbial, as giving his daughter 
the key of the peat chest, and bidding her take out a peat 
and a half, that she might put on a good fire. It was the 
part of Mr Forsyth to divest the proverb of its edge, by 
opening up a trade with the northern ports of England, and 
introducing to the acquaintance of his town's-people the 
" black stones " of Newcastle, which have been used ever 
since as the staple fuel of the place. To those who know 
how very dependent the inhabitants are on this useful 
fossil, there seems an intangible sort of strangeness in the 
fact, that it is not yet a full century since Mr Forsyth's 
sloop entered the bay with the first cargo of coal ever 
brought into it. One almost expects to hear next of the 
man who first taught them to rear corn, or to break in from 
their state of original wildness the sheep and the cow. 
Mr Forsyth had entered on his twenty-fourth year, and 



308 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

had been rather more than six years engaged in business 
when the Rebellion broke out. There was an end to all 
security for the time, and, of course, an end to trade ; but 
even the least busy found enough to employ them in the 
perilous state of the country. Bands of marauders, the 
very refuse of the Highlands — for its better men had gone 
to the south with the rebel army — went prowling over the 
Lowlands, making war with all alike, whether Jacobites or 
Hanoverians, who were rich enough to be robbed. Mr 
Forsyth's sloop, in one of her coasting voyages of this 
period, when laden with a cargo of Government stores, 
was forced by stress of weather into the Dornoch Frith, 
where she was seized by a party of Highlanders, who held 
her for three days in the name of the prince. They did 
little else, however, than consume the master's sea-stock, 
and joke with the ship-boy, a young but very intelligent 
lad, who, for many years after, when Mr Forsyth had him- 
self become a shipowner, was the master of his vessel. He 
was named Robertson ; and as there were several of the 
Robertsons of Struan among the party, he was soon on very 
excellent terms with them. On one occasion, however, 
when rallying some of the Struans on their undertaking, 
he spoke of their leader as " the Pretender." " Beware, 
my boy," said an elderly Highlander, " and do not again 
repeat that word; there are men in the ship who, if they 
heard you, would perhaps take your life for it; for, re- 
member, we are not all Robertsons." Another party of the 
marauders took possession of the town of Cromarty for a 
short time, and dealt after the same manner with the stores 
of the town's-people, whether of food or clothing, as the 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 309 

other had done with the stores of the shipmaster. But 
they were rather mischievous thieves than dangerous ene- 
mies ; and, except that they robbed a few of the women of 
their webs and yarn, and a few of the men of their shoes 
and bonnets, they left them no very grave cause to regret 
their visit. 

It so chanced, however, that Mr Forsyth was brought 
more seriously into contact with the rebels than any of his 
townsmen. The army of the prince, after the failure of 
the attempt on England, fell back on the Highlands ; and 
a body of sixteen hundred king's troops, which had occu- 
pied Inverness, had retreated northwards, on their approach, 
into the county of Sutherland. They had crossed by the 
ferry of Cromarty in the boats of the town's fishermen ; 
and these, on landing on the northern side, they had broken 
up, to prevent the pursuit of the rebels. Scarcely had they 
been gone a day, however, when an agent of Government, 
charged with a large some of money, the arrears of their 
pay, arrived at Cromarty. He had reached Inverness 
only to find it in possession of the rebels; and after a 
perilous journey over a tract of country where almost every 
second man had declared for the prince, he found at 
Cromarty his farther progress northward arrested by the 
frith. In this dilemma, with the sea before him and 
the rebels behind, he applied to William Forsyth, and, 
communicating to him the nature and importance of his 
charge, solicited his assistance and advice. Fortunately Mr 
Forsyth's boat had been on one of her coasting voyages 
at the time the king's troops had broken up the others, 
and her return was now hourly expected. Refreshments 



310 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

were hastily set before the half-exhausted agent ; and then, 
hurrying him to the feet of the precipices which guard the 
entrance of the frith, Mr Forsyth watched with him among 
the cliffs until the boat came sweeping round the nearer 
headland. The merchant hailed her in the passing, saw 
the agent and his charge safely embarked, and, after in- 
structing the crew that they should proceed northwards, 
keeping as much as possible in the middle of the frith, 
until they had either come abreast of Sutherland or fallen 
in with a sloop-of-war then stationed near the mouth of 
the Spey, he returned home. In the middle of the follow- 
ing night he was roused by a party of rebels, who, after 
interrogating him strictly regarding the agent and his 
charge, and ransacking his house and shop, carried him 
with them a prisoner to Inverness. They soon found, 
however, that the treasure was irrecoverably beyond their 
reach, and that nothing was to be gained by the further 
detention of Mr Forsyth. He was liberated, therefore, 
after a day and night's imprisonment, just as the rebels 
had learned that the army of Cumberland had reached 
the Spey ; and he returned to Cromarty in time enough to 
witness from the neighbouring hill the smoke of Culloden, 
In after-life he used sometimes to amuse his friends "by 
a humorous detail of his sufferings in the cause of the 
king. 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 311 



CHAPTER III. 

Important Results of the Rebellion — Hereditary Jurisdictions Abolished 
—Justices of the Peace— Old Session Record — Tyranny of the 
Hereditary Judges — Black Andrew Monro of Newtarbat. 

By far the most important event of the last century to the 
people of Scotland was the Rebellion of 1745. To use an 
illustration somewhat the worse for the wear, it resembled 
one of those violent hurricanes of the tropics which over- 
turn trees and houses, and strew the shores with wreck, 
but which more than compensate for the mischiefs they 
occasion by dissipating the deadly vapours of plague and 
pestilence, and restoring the community to health. Previous 
to its suppression the people possessed only a nominal 
freedom. The Church, for which they had done and 
suffered so much, had now been re-established among 
them for nearly sixty years ; and they were called, as 
elders, to take a part in its worship, and to deliberate in 
its courts. The laws, too, especially those passed since 
the Union, recognised them as free. More depends, 
however, on the administration of law than on even the 
framing of it The old hereditary jurisdictions still remained 
entire ; and the meanest sheriff or baron of Scotland, after 
holding a court composed of only himself and his clerk, 
might consign the freest of his vassals to his dungeon, or 
hang him up at his castle-door. But the Rebellion showed 
that more might be involved in this despotism of the chiefs 



312 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

and proprietors of the country than the oppression of 
individuals, and that the power which they possessed, 
through its means, of calling out their vassals on their own 
behalf to-day, might be employed in precipitating them 
against the Government on the morrow. In the year 
1747, therefore, hereditary jurisdictions were abolished 
all over Scotland, and the power of judging in matters 
of life and death restricted to judges appointed and paid 
by the Crown. To decide on such matters of minor 
importance as are furnished by every locality, justices 
were appointed; and Mr Forsyth's name was placed on 
the commission of the peace, — a small matter it may be 
thought in the present day, but by no means an unim- 
portant one ninety years ago to either his town's-people 
or himself. 

Justices of the peace had been instituted about a century 
and a half before. But the hereditary jurisdictions of the 
kingdom leaving them scarce any room for the exercise of 
their limited authority, the order fell into desuetude ; and 
previous to its re-appointment, on the suppression of the 
Rebellion, the administration of the law seems to have been 
divided, in at least the remoter provinces, between the here- 
ditary judges and the Church. The session records of 
Cromarty during the establishment of Episcopacy are still 
extant, and they curiously exemplify the class of offences 
specially cognizable by the ecclesiastical courts. They 
serve, too, to illustrate, in a manner sufficiently striking, the 
low tone of morals which obtained among the people. Our 
great-great-grandfathers were not a whit wiser, nor better, 
nor happier, than ourselves \ and our great-great-grand 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 313 

mothers seem to have had quite the same passions as their 
descendants, with rather less ability to control them, 
There were ladies of Cromarty, in the reign of Charles II., 
" maist horrible cussers," who accused one another of being 
"witches and witch getts, with all their folk afore them " 
for generations untold, — gentlemen who had to " stand at 
the pillar " for unlading the boats of a smuggler at ten 
o'clock on a Sabbath night, — " maist scandalous repro- 
bates," who got drunk on Sundays, "and abused decent 
folk ganging till the kirk," — and " ill-conditioned royit loons, 
who raisit disturbances, and faught f the scholar's loft," 
in the time of Divine service. Husbands and their wives 
do penance in the church in this reign for their domestic 
quarrels : boys are whipped by the beadle for returning 
from a journey on the Sabbath : men are set in the Jougs 
for charging elders of rather doubtful character with being 
drunk : boatmen are fined for crossing the ferry with pas- 
sengers " during church-time ; " and Presbyterian farmers 
are fined still more heavily for absenting themselves from 
church. Meanwhile, when the session was thus employed, 
the sheriff was amusing himself in cutting off men's ears, 
starving them in his dungeon, or hanging them up by the 
neck on his gallows. A few dark traditions, illustrative of 
the intolerable tyranny of the period, still survive ; and it 
is not yet more than nine years since a quantity of human 
bones, found in digging on an eminence a little above the 
harbour, which in the reign of Charles is said to have been 
a frequent scene of executions, served as an attestation to 
their general truth. It is said that the last person sentenced 
to death on the gallows-hill of Cromarty was a poor High- 



3H A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

lander who had insulted the sheriff, and that, when in the 
act of mounting the ladder, he was pardoned at the request 
of the sheriff's lady. 

There is much of interest in catching occasional glimpses 
of a bygone state of society through the chance vistas of 
tradition. They serve to show us, in the expressive lan- 
guage of Scripture, " the rock whence we were hewn, and 
the hole of the pit whence we were dug." They serve, too, 
to dissipate those dreamy imaginings of the good and 
happiness of the past in which it seems an instinct of our 
nature to indulge ; and enable us to correct the exaggerated 
estimates of that school of philosophy which sees most to 
admire in society the further it recedes from civilisation. I 
am enabled to furnish the reader with one of these chance 
glimpses. 

An old man, who died about ten years ago, has told me 
that, when a boy, he was sent on one occasion to the manse 
of a neighbouring parish, to bring back the horse of an 
elderly gentleman of the place, a retired officer, who had 
gone to visit the minister with the intention of remaining 
with him for a few days. The officer was a silver-headed, 
erect old man, who had served as an ensign at the battle of 
Blenheim, and who, when he had retired on half-pay about 
forty years after, was still a poor lieutenant. His riding 
days were wellnigh over ; and the boy overtook him long 
ere he had reached the manse, and just as he was joined by 
Mr Forsyth, who had come riding up by a cross-road, and 
then slackened bridle to keep him company. They entered 
into conversation. Mr Forsyth was curious in his inquiries, 
the old gentleman communicative and the boy a good 



A SCO TCH MERCHANT. 3 1 5 

listener. The old man spoke much of the allied army 
under Marlborough. By far the strongest man in it, he 
said, was a gentleman from Ross-shire — Munro of New- 
more. He had seen him raise a piece of ordnance to his 
breast which Mackenzie of Fairburn, another proprietor of 
the same district, had succeeded in raising to his knee, but 
which no other man among more than eighty thousand 
could lift from off the ground. Newmore was considerably 
advanced in life at the time — perhaps turned of fifty ; for 
he had arrived at mature manhood about the middle of the 
reign of Charles II. \ and being a singularly daring as well 
as an immensely powerful man, he had signalised himself 
in early life in the feuds of his native district. Some of his 
lands bordered on those of Black Andrew Monro, the last 
baron of Newtarbat, one of the most detestable wretches 
that ever abused the power of pit and gallows. But as at 
least their nominal politics were the same, and as the baron, 
though by far the less powerful man, was in perhaps a cor- 
responding degree the more powerful proprietor, they had 
never come to an open rupture. Newmore, however, by 
venturing at times to screen some of the baron's vassals 
from his fury, — at times by taking part against him in the 
quarrel of some of the petty landholders, whom the tyrant 
never missed an occasion to oppress, — was by no means 
one of his favourites. All the labours of the baron's de- 
mesnes were, of course, performed by his vassals as part of 
their proper service. A late wet harvest came on, and they 
were employed in cutting down his crops when their own 
lay rotting on the ground. It is natural that in such cir- 
cumstances they should have laboured unwillingly. All 



316 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

their dread of the baron even, who remained among them 
in the fields, indulging in every caprice of a fierce and cruel 
temper, aggravated by irresponsible power, proved scarcely 
sufficient to keep them at work ; and, to inspire them with 
deeper terror, an elderly female, who had been engaged 
during the night in reaping a little field of her own, and had 
come somewhat late in the morning, was actually stripped 
naked by the savage, and sent home again. In the evening 
he was visited by Monro of Newmore, who came, accom- 
panied by only a single servant, to expostulate with him on 
an act so atrocious and disgraceful. Newmore was wel- 
comed with a show of hospitality; the baron heard him 
patiently, and, calling for wine, they sat down and drank 
together. It was only a few weeks before, however, that 
one of the neighbouring lairds, who had been treated with 
a similar show of kindness by the baron, had been stripped 
half-naked at his table, when in a state of intoxication, and 
sent home with his legs tied under his horse's belly. New- 
more, therefore, kept warily on his guard. He had left his 
horse ready saddled at the gate, and drank no more than he 
could master, which was quite as much, however, as would 
have overcome most men. One after one the baron's re- 
tainers began to drop into the room, each on a separate 
pretence; and, as the fifth entered, Newmore, who had 
seemed as if yielding to the influence of the liquor, affected 
to fall asleep. The retainers came clustering round him. 
Two seized him by the arms, and two more essayed to 
fasten him to his chair; when up he sprang, dashed his 
four assailants from him as if they had been boys of ten 
summers, and, raising the fifth from off the floor, hurled 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 317 

him headlong against the baron, who fell prostrate before 
the weight and momentum of so unusual a missile. In a 
minute after, Newmore had reached the gate, and, mount- 
ing his horse, rode away. The baron died during the night, 
a victim to apoplexy, induced, it is said, by the fierce and 
vindictive passions awakened on this occasion ; and a 
Gaelic proverb still current in the Highlands of Ross-shire 
shows with what feelings his poor vassals must have re- 
garded the event. Even to the present day, a Highlander 
will remark, when overborne by oppression, that " the same 
God still lives who killed Black Andrew Monro of New- 
tarbat." 



CHAPTER IV. 

Character of Mr Forsyth as a Magistrate — Quarrels of the Town's-folks 
— The Boys and the Pease — Mr Forsyth's Marriage — Better Society 
of the Place — Remarks on the Character of the People — Death of 
Mrs Forsyth. 

It was no unimportant change to the people of Cromarty, 
which transferred them from the jurisdiction of hereditary 
judges to the charge of a justice such as Mr Forsyth. For 
more than thirty years after his appointment he was the 
only acting magistrate in the place ; and such was the con- 
fidence of the town's-people in his judgment and integrity, 
that during all that time there was not in a single instance 
an appeal from his decisions. In office and character he 
seems to have closely resembled one of the old landammans 
of the Swiss cantons. The age was a rude one : man is a 



318 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

fighting animal from very instinct, and his second nature, 
custom, mightily improves the propensity : and nine-tenths 
of the cases brought before Mr Forsyth were cases of 
quarrels. With the more desperate class of brawlers he 
could deal at times with proper severity. In most instances, 
however, a quarrel cost him a few glasses of his best 
Hollands, and cost no one else anything. The disputants 
were generally shown that neither of them had been 
quite in the right ; that one had been too hasty, and the 
other too ready to take offence ; that the first blow had 
been decidedly a wrong, and the second unquestionably a 
misdemeanour ■ and then, after drinking one another's 
health, they parted, wonderfully pleased with the decision 
of Mr Forsyth, and resolved to have no more fighting till 
their next difference. He was much a favourite, too, with 
the townVboys. On one occasion, a party of them were 
brought before him on a charge of stealing green pease out 
of a field. Mr Forsyth addressed them in his sternest 
manner. There was nothing, he said, which he so abhorred 
as the stealing of green pease; — it was positively theft. 
He even questioned whether their parents did right in 
providing them with pockets. Were they again to be 
brought before him for a similar offence, they might depend, 
every one of them, on being locked up in the Tolbooth for 
a fortnight. Meanwhile, to keep them honest, he had 
resolved on sowing a field of pease himself, to which he 
would make them all heartily welcome. Accordingly, next 
season the field was sown, and there could not be a more 
exposed locality. Such, however, was the spirit of the little 
men of the place, all of whom had come to a perfect under- 



A SCO TCH MERCHANT. 3 1 9 

standing of the decision, that not one pod of Mr Forsyth's 
pease was carried away. 

Before the close of 1752, when he completed his thirtieth 
year, Mr Forsyth had succeeded in settling his two brothers 
in business, the one as a shopkeeper in Dingwall, the other 
as a merchant in Newcastle. Both gained for themselves, 
in their respective circles of acquaintance, the character of 
worthy and intelligent men; and their descendants still 
occupy respectable places in society. They had acquired 
their education, and formed their habits of business, under 
the eye of William ; and now in the autumn of this year, 
after he had thus honourably acquitted himself of the 
charge devolved upon him by the death of his father, he 
found himself at liberty to gratify an attachment formed 
several years before, by marrying a young lady of great 
worth and beauty, Miss Margaret Russell, a native of 
Morayshire. She was the daughter of Mr Russell of Earls- 
mill, chamberlain to the Earl of Moray. 

I shall indulge, with leave of the reader, in a brief view 
of the society to which Mr Forsyth introduced his young 
wife. The feudal superior of the town, and proprietor of 
the neighbouring lands, formed, of course, its natural and 
proper head. But the proprietor of this period, a Captain 
William Urquhart of Meldrum, had thrown himself so fairly 
beyond its pale, that on his own estate, and in his own 
village, there were none to court favour or friendship at 
his hands. He was a gentleman of good family, and had 
done gallant service to the Spaniards of South America 
against the buccaneers. He was, however, a stanch Catho- 
lic, and he had joined issue with the town's-people, headed 



320 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

by Mr Forsyth, in a vexatious and expensive lawsuit, in 
which he had contended, as patron of the parish, for the 
privilege of presenting them with a useless, time-serving 
clergyman, a friend of his own. And so it was, that the 
zeal, so characteristic at the time of the people of Scot- 
land, — a zeal for religion and the interests of the Kirk, 
— had more than neutralised in the minds of the towns- 
people their scarcely less characteristic feelings of respect 
for the laird. His place, therefore, in the society of the 
town was occupied by persons of somewhat less influence 
than himself. There was a little circle of gentility in it, 
rich in blood, but poor in fortune, which furnished a sort 
of reposing place for the old prejudices of the people in 
favour of high descent, — of ladies who were " real ladies," 
and gentlemen with coats of arms. Whenever there was 
aught to be done or resisted, however, the whole looked 
up to Mr Forsyth as their man of thought and action. 

At the head of this little community there was a dowager 
lady, the many virtues of whose character have found a 
warm encomiast in the judicious and sober-minded Dod- 
dridge. The good Lady Ardoch has been dead for the last 
seventy years, and yet her name is scarcely less familiar 
in the present day, to at least the more staid town's-people, 
than it was half a century ago. She was a daughter of the 
Fowlis family, — one of the most ancient and honourable in 
Scotland : the ninth baron of Fowlis was slain fighting 
under the Bruce at Bannockburn. Her three brothers, — 
men whose heroism of character and high religious principle 
have drawn forth the very opposite sympathies of Philip 
Doddridge and Sir Walter Scott, — she had lost in the late 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 321 

Rebellion. The eldest, Sir Robert Munro, the chief of his 
clan, died, with his youngest brother, at the battle of Fal- 
kirk ; the third was shot about nine months after by an 
assassin, who had mistaken him for another by whom he 
had been deeply injured, and whose sorrow and remorse on 
discovering that he had unwittingly killed one of the best 
of his countrymen, are well described by Sir Walter in his 
" Tales of a Grandfather." Next in place to the good Lady 
Ardoch was the good Lady Scotsbum, (the widow of a 
Ross-shire proprietor,) who derived her descent from that 
Archibald, Marquis of Argyll, who acted so conspicuous a 
part during the troubles of the times of Charles I., and 
perished on the scaffold on the accession of Charles II. 
In excellence of character and the respect with which she 
was regarded, she very much resembled her contemporary, 
Lady Ardoch. There were, besides, a family of ladies in 
the place, the daughters of Urquhart of Greenhill, — a mer- 
chant of the times of the herring- drove, and a scion of the 
old Urquharts of Cromarty; and another much-respected 
family, the descendants of one of the old clergymen of the 
place, a Mr Gordon. A few ladies more of rather lower 
pretensions, whom the kindness of relatives in the south 
enabled to be hospitable and genteel, some on fifty pounds 
a year, and some on thirty; and a few retired half-pay 
ensigns and lieutenants, one of whom, as we have seen, had 
fought in the wars of Marlborough, — completed what was 
deemed the better society of the place. They had their 
occasional tea-parties, at which they all met ; for Mr For- 
syth's trade with Holland had introduced, ere now, about 
eight tea-kettles into the place. They had, too, what was 



322 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

more characteristic of the age, — their regular prayer-meet- 
ings; and at these, — for Christianity, as the equalising 
religion of free men, has ever been a breaker-down of castes 
and fictitious distinctions, — the whole graver people of the 
town met. The parlour of Lady Ardoch was open once a 
fortnight to the poorest inhabitant of the place ; and the 
good lady of thirty descents knelt in her silks at the same 
form with the good fisherwoman in her curch and toy. 

It is not, however, by notices such as these that adequate 
notions of the changes which have taken place within the 
last century in the very framework of Scottish society can 
be conveyed to the reader. " The state of things is so fast 
changing in Scotland," says Dr Johnson, in one of his letters 
to Boswell, " that a Scotchman can hardly realise the times 
of his grandfather." 

Society was in a transition state at the time. The old 
adventitious bonds which had held it together in the past 
still existed ; but opinion was employed in forging others of 
a more natural and less destructible character. Among 
these older ties, the pride of family — a pride which must 
have owed its general diffusion over Scotland to the clans 
and septs of the feudal system — held by far the most im- 
portant place. There was scarce an individual, in at least 
the northern counties, whose claim to self-respect was not 
involved in the honour of some noble family. There ran 
through his humble genealogy some silver thread of high 
descent; — some great-great-grandfather or grandmother con- 
nected him with the aristocracy of the country ; and it was 
his pride and honour, not that he was an independent man, 
but that he was in some sort a dependent gentleman. 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 323 

Hence that assumption of gentility on the part of the 
Scotch so often and so unmercifully lashed by the English 
satirists of the last century. Hence, too, in no small mea- 
sure, the entire lack of political Whiggism among the 
people. Under the influence of the feeling described, a 
great family might be compared to one of those fig-trees 
of the east which shoot their pendulous branches into the 
soil, and, deriving their stability from a thousand separate 
roots, defy the tornado and the hurricane. Be it remem- 
bered, too, that great families included in this way the 
whole of Scottish society, from its upper to its lower 
extreme. 

Now, one of the objections to this kind of bond was the 
very unequal measure of justice and protection which it 
secured to the tw r o grand classes which it united. It de- 
pressed the people in the one scale in the proportion in 
w r hich it raised the aristocracy in the other. It did much 
for Juggernaut, but little for Juggernaut's worshippers. 
Though wellnigh as powerful at this time in the north of 
Scotland as it had been at any previous period, it was fast 
losing its influence in the southern districts. The persecu- 
tions of the former age had done much to lessen its efficacy, 
by setting the aristocracy, who, in most instances, held by 
the court politics and the court religion, in direct and 
hostile opposition to the people. And the growing com- 
merce of the larger towns had done still more to lower it, 
by raising up from among the people that independent 
middle class, the creators and conservators of popular 
liberty, without which the population of any country can 
consist of only slaves and their masters. Even in the 



324 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

northern districts there were causes coming into operation, 
which were eventually to annihilate the sentiment in at 
least its more mischievous tendencies. The state of 
matters in the town of Cromarty at this time, where a 
zealous Catholic was struggling to obtrude a minister of 
his own choosing on a Protestant people, furnishes no bad 
illustration of the nature of some of these, and of their 
mode of working. The absurd and mischievous law of 
patronage was doing in part for the Lowland districts of 
the north what the persecutions of the Stuarts had done for 
those of the south an age before, and what the large sheep- 
farm system, and the consequent ejection of the old occu- 
pants of the soil, has done for the Highlands an age after. 
And the first two were causes admirably suited to awaken 
a people who had derived their notions of rational liberty 
solely through the medium of religious belief. Their Whig- 
gism was a Whiggism not of this world, but of the other ; 
and as the privilege of preparing themselves for heaven in 
what they believed to be exclusively the right way was the 
only privilege they deemed worth while contending for, 
their first struggle for liberty was a struggle that their con- 
sciences might be free. The existence, too, of such men 
among them as Mr Forsyth, — men who had risen from their 
own level, — had a twofold influence on the contest. They 
formed a sort of aristocracy of the people, that served to 
divide the old feelings of respect which had been so long 
paid exclusively to the higher aristocracy ; and they were 
enabled, through their superior intelligence, to give a weight 
and respectability to the popular party which it could not 
otherwise have possessed. 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 325 

William Forsyth was singularly unfortunate in his mar- 
riage. Towards the close of the first year, when but learn- 
ing fully to appreciate the comforts of a state to which so 
many of the better sentiments of our nature bear reference, 
and to estimate more completely the worth of his partner, 
she was suddenly removed from him by death, at a time 
when he looked with most hope for a further accession to 
his happiness. She died in child-bed, and the fruit of her 
womb died with her. Her husband, during the long after- 
course of his life, never forgot her, and for eleven years 
posterior to the event he remained a widower for her sake. 



CHAPTER V. 

Early Struggles of a Poor Scholar — Visits his Old Schoolfellow, Mr 
Forsyth — Originates the Kelp Trade — Story of two of Mr Forsyth's 
Kelp-Burners — Original Trade of British Linen Company — Exer- 
tions of Mr Forsyth as their Agent for the North of Scotland. 

Among the schoolfellows of William Forsyth there was a 
poor orphan boy named Hossack, a native of the landward 
part of the parish. He had lost both his parents when an 
infant, and owed his first knowledge of letters to the charity 
of the schoolmaster. His nearer relatives were all dead, 
and he was dependent for a precarious subsistence on the 
charity of a few distant connexions, not a great deal richer 
than himself, — among the rest, on a poor widow, a name- 
sake of his own, who earned a scanty subsistence by her 
wheel ; but who had heart enough to impart a portion of 



326 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

her little to the destitute scholar. The boy was studious 
and thoughtful, and surpassed most of his schoolfellows ; 
and, after passing with singular rapidity through the course 
pursued at school, he succeeded in putting himself to col- 
lege, The struggle was arduous and protracted : some- 
times he wrought as a common labourer, sometimes he ran 
errands, sometimes he taught a school : he deemed no 
honest employment too mean or too laborious, that for- 
warded his scheme ; and thus he at length passed through 
college. His town's-people then lost sight of him for nearly 
twenty years. It was understood, meanwhile, that some 
nameless friend in the south had settled a comfortable 
annuity on poor old widow Hossack, and that a Cromarty 
sailor, who had been attacked by a dangerous illness when 
at London, had owed his life to the gratuitous attentions of 
a famous physician of the place, who had recognised him 
as a townsman. No one, however, thought of the poor 
scholar ; and it was not until his carriage drove up one day 
through the main street of the town, and stopped at the 
door of William Forsyth, that he was identified with " the 
great Doctor" who had attended the seaman, and with the 
benefactor of the poor widow. On entering the cottage of 
the latter, he found her preparing gruel for supper, and 
was asked, with the anxiety of a gratitude that would fain 
render him some return, " Oh, sir, will ye no tak' brochan ? " 
He is said to have been a truly excellent and benevolent 
man, — the Abercromby of a former age ; and the ingenious 
and pious Moses Browne (a clergyman who, to the disgrace 
of the English Church, was suffered to languish through life 
in a curacy of fifty pounds per annum) thus addresses him 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 327 

in one of his larger poems, written immediately after the 
recovery of the author from a long and dangerous illness. 

" The God I trust, with timeliest kind relief, 
Sent the beloved physician to my aid, 
(Generous, humanest, affable of soul, 
Thee, dearest Hossack ; oh ! long known, long loved, 
Long proved ; in oft found tenderest watching cares, 
The Christian friend, the man of feeling heart !) 
And in his skilful, heaven- directed hand, 
Put his best pleasing, only fee, my cure." 

— Sunday T/ioughts, part iv. 

To this gentleman Mr Forsyth owed a very useful hint, 
which he did not fail to improve. They w r ere walking 
together at low ebb along the extensive tract of beach 
which skirts, on the south, the entrance of the Frith of 
Cromarty. The shore everywhere in this tract presents 
a hard bottom of boulder stones and rolled pebbles, thickly 
covered with marine plants ; and the doctor remarked that 
the brown tangled forests before them might be profitably 
employed in the manufacture of kelp, and, at the request of 
Mr Forsyth, described the process. To the enterprising 
and vigorous-minded merchant the remark served to throw 
open a new field of exertion : he immediately engaged in 
the kelp trade; and, for more than forty years after, it 
enabled him to employ from ten to twelve persons during 
the summer and autumn of each year, and proved remunera- 
tive to himself. 

There is a story of two of Mr Forsyth's kelp-burners, 
which, as it forms a rather curious illustration of some of 
the wilder beliefs of the period, I shall venture on intro- 
ducing to the reader. The Sutors of Cromarty were known 



32S A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

all over the country as resorts of the hawk, the eagle, and 
the raven, and of all the other builders among dizzy and 
inaccessible cliffs ; and a gentleman of Moray, a sportsman 
of the old school, having applied to a friend in this part of 
the country to procure for him a pair of young hawks, of a 
species prized by the falconer, Tarn Poison, an unsettled 
eccentric being, remarkable chiefly for his practical jokes, 
and his constant companion Jock Watson, a person of 
nearly similar character, were intrusted with the commis- 
sion, and a promise of five pounds Scots, no inconsiderable 
sum in these days, held out to them as the reward of their 
success in the execution of it. They soon discovered a 
nest, but it was perched near the top. of a lofty cliff, inac- 
cessible to the climber ; and there was a serious objection 
against descending to it by means of a rope, seeing that the 
rope could not be held securely by fewer than three or four 
persons, who would naturally claim a share of the reward. 
It was suggested, however, by Tarn, that by fastening the 
rope to a stake even one person might prove sufficient to 
manage it when the other warped himself down ; and so, 
providing themselves with the stay-rope of one of their 
boats, and the tether-stake of one of their cattle, — for, like 
most of the town's-people, they were both boatmen and 
croft-renters, — they set out for the cliff early on a Monday 
morning, ere the other members of the kelp party with 
whom they wrought were astir. The stake was driven into 
the stiff diluvial clay on the summit of the cliff; and Tarn's 
companion, who was the lighter man of the two, cautiously 
creeping to the edge, swung himself over, and began to 
descend ; but, on reaching the end of the stay-rope, he 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 329 

found he was still a few feet short of the nest ; and, anxious 
only to secure the birds, he called on his companion to 
raise the stake, and fix it a little nearer the brink. The 
stake was accordingly raised \ but the strength of one man 
being insufficient to hold it on such broken ground, and 
far less than sufficient to fasten it down as before, Tarn, in 
spite of his exertions, staggered step after step towards the 
edge of the precipice. " O Jock ! O Jock ! O Jock I" 
he exclaimed, straining, meanwhile, every nerve in an agony 
of exertion, "ye '11 be o'er like a pock o' weet fish." " Gae 
a wee bittie down yet," answered the other. "Down! 
down ! deil gae down wi' ye, for I can gae nae farther," 
rejoined Tarn ; and, throwing off the rope, — for he now 
stood on the uttermost brink, — a loud scream, and, after a 
fearful pause of half a minute, a deep hollow sound from 
the bottom told all the rest. "Willawins for poor Jock 
Watson," exclaimed Tarn Poison; "win the gude five 
pounds wha like, they'll no be won, it seems, by either him 
or me." 

The party of kelp-burners were proceeding this morning 
to the scene of their labours through a heavy fog ; and as 
they reached the furnace, one by one, they sat down front- 
ing it to rest them after their walk, and wait the coming up 
of the others. Tarn Poison had already taken his place 
among the rest, and there were but two amissing, — the man 
whose dead body now lay at the foot of the cliff, and a 
serious elderly person, one of his neighbours, whose com- 
pany he sometimes courted. At length they were both 
seen as if issuing out of a dense cloud of mist. 

" Yonder they come," said one of the kelp-burners j 



330 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

" but, gudesake ! only look how little Jock Watson looms 
through the fog as mickle 's a giant." 

"Jock Watson !" exclaimed Poison, starting to his feet, 
and raising his hands to his eyes, with a wild expression of 
bewilderment and terror, " ay, murdered Jock Watson, as 
sure's death V 

The figure shrank into the mist as he spoke, and the old 
man was seen approaching alone. 

" What hae ye done to Jock Watson, Donald ! " was the 
eager query put to him, on his coming up, by half a dozen 
voices at once. 

" Ask Tarn Poison there," said the old man : " I tapped 
at Jock's window as I passed, and found he had set out 
wi' Tarn half an hour afore daybreak." 

" Oh/' said Tarn, " it was poor murdered Jock Watson's 
ghaist we saw ; — it was Jock's ghaist." And so he divulged 
the whole story. 

The British Linen Company had been established in 
Edinburgh about the year 1746, chiefly with a view, as the 
name implies, of forwarding the interests of the linen trade ; 
and in a few years after, Mr Forsyth, whose character as an 
active and successful man of business was beginning to be 
appreciated in more than the north of Scotland, was chosen 
as the company's agent for that extensive tract of country 
which intervenes between the Pentland Frith and the Frith 
of Beauly. The linen trade was better suited at this time 
to the state of the country and the previously-acquired 
habits of the people than any other could have been. All 
the linens worn in Scotland, with the exception, perhaps, of 
some French cambrics, were of home manufacture. Every 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 331 

female was skilled in spinning, and every little hamlet had 
its weaver, who, if less a master of his profession than some 
of the weavers of our manufacturing towns in the present 
day, was as decidedly superior to our provincial weavers. 
A knowledge of what may be termed the higher depart- 
ments of the craft was spread more equally over the 
country than now; and, as is always the case before the 
minuter subdivisions of labour take place, if less could be 
produced by the trade as a body, the average ability ranked 
higher in individuals. In establishing the linen trade, 
therefore, as the skill essential to carrying it on already 
existed, it was but necessary that motives should be held 
out sufficiently powerful to awaken the industry of the 
people • and these were furnished by Mr Forsyth, in the 
form of remunerative prices for their labour. The town of 
Cromarty, from its central situation and excellent harbour, 
was chosen as the depot of the establishment. The flax 
was brought in vessels from Holland, prepared for the 
spinners in Cromarty, and then distributed by the boats of 
Mr Forsyth along the shores of the Friths of Dornoch, 
Dingwall, and Beauly, and northwards as far as Wick and 
Thurso. At the commencement of the [trade the distaff 
and spindle was in extensive use all over the north of Scot- 
land, and the spinning-wheel only partially introduced into 
some of the towns ; but the more primitive implement was 
comparatively slow and inefficient • and Mr Forsyth, the 
more effectually to supplant it by the better machine, made 
it an express condition with all whom he employed for a 
second year, that at least one wheel should be introduced 
into every family. He, besides, hired skilful spinners to go 



332 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

about the country teaching its use; and so effectual were 
his measures, that in about ten years after the commence- 
ment of the trade, the distaff and spindle had almost 
entirely disappeared. There are parts of the remote High- 
lands, however, in which it is still in use • and the writer, 
when residing in a wild district of western Ross, which 
borders on the Atlantic, has repeatedly seen the Highland 
women, as they passed to and from the shore, at once 
bending under the weight of the creel with which they 
manured their lands, and ceaselessly twirling the spindle as 
it hung beneath the staff. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Mr Forsyth becomes a Shipowner — Tarn Reid and the Turpentine Bottle 
— Character of an Extinct Class of Seamen — The Crew of Mr 
Forsyth's sloop the Elizabeth — Anecdote of one of his Shipmasters 
— Story of Old Saunders M Tver and the Minister of Kilmuir — The 
Two Boatmen. 

About five years after the establishment of the linen trade, 
Mr Forsyth became a shipowner ; and as he had made it 
a rule never to provide himself from other countries with 
what could be produced by the workmen of his own, his 
first vessel, a fine large sloop, was built at Fortrose. There 
had been shipbuilders established at Cromarty at a much 
earlier period. Among the designations attached to names, 
which we find in the older records of the place, there 
is none of more frequent occurrence than that of ship- 
carpenter. There are curious stories, too, connected with 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 333 

ship-launches, which serve to mark the remote period at 
which these must have occurred. An occasion of this 
kind, at a time when the knowledge of mechanics was 
more imperfect and much less general than at present, was 
always one of great uncertainty. Accidents were continu- 
ally occurring ; and superstition found room to mingle her 
mysterious horrors with the doubts and fears with which 
it was naturally attended. Witches and the evil eye were 
peculiarly dreaded by the carpenter on the day of a launch; 
and it is said of one of the early Cromarty launches, that 
the vessel having stopped short in the middle of her course, 
the master carpenter was so irritated with a reputed witch 
among the spectators, to whom he attributed the accident, 
that he threw her down and broke her arm. A single 
anecdote, though of a lighter cast, preserves the recollec- 
tion of Mr Forsyth's ship-building at Fortrose. The vessel 
was nearly finished, and a half-witted knave, named Tarn 
Reid, who had the knack of tricking everybody, — even 
himself at times, — was despatched by Mr Forsyth with a 
bottle of turpentine to the painters. Tarn, however, who 
had never more than heard of wine, and who seems to have 
taken it for granted that the bottle he carried contained 
nothing worse, contrived to drink the better half of it by 
the w r ay, and was drugged almost to death for his pains. 
When afterwards humorously charged by Mr Forsyth with 
breach of trust, and urged to confess, truly, whether he had 
actually drunk the whole of the missing turpentine, he is 
said to have replied, in great wrath, that he " widna gie ae 
glass o' whisky for a ? the wine i' the warld." 

Mr Forsyth's vessels were at first employed almost exclu- 



334 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

sively in the Dutch trade ; but the commerce of the country 
gradually shifted its old channels, and in his latter days they 
were engaged mostly in trading between the north of Scot- 
land and the ports of Leith, London, and Newcastle. 
There are curious traditionary anecdotes of his sailors still 
afloat among the people, which illustrate the credulous and 
imaginative character of the age. Stories of this class may 
be regarded as the fossils of history ; — they show the nature 
and place of the formation in which they occur. The 
Scotch sailors of ninety years ago were in many respects a 
very different sort of persons from the sailors of the present 
day. They formed one of the most religious classes of the 
community : there were even founders of sects among them. 
The too famous John Gibb was a sailor of Borrowstoun* 
ness ; and the worthy Scotchman who remarked to Peter 
Walker that " the ill of Scotland he found everywhere, but 
the good of Scotland nowhere save at home," was a sailor 
too. Mr Forsyth was much attached to the seamen of this 
old and venerable class, and a last remnant of them might 
be found in his vessels when they had become extinct 
everywhere else. On the breaking out of the revolutionary 
war, his sloop the Elizabeth was boarded when lying at 
anchor in one of our Highland lochs by a press-gang from 
a king's vessel, and the crew, who chanced to be all under 
hatches at the time, were summoned on deck. First ap- 
peared the ancient weather-beaten master, a person in his 
grand climacteric ; then came Saunders M'lver, the mate, 
a man who had twice sailed round the world about half a 
century before ; then came decent Thomas Grant, who had 
been an elder of the kirk for more than forty years ; and 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 335 

last of all came old, gray-headed Robert Hossack, a still 
older man than any of the others. " Good Heavens ! " 
exclaimed the officer who commanded the party, "here, 
lads, are the four sailors who manned the ark alive still." 
I need hardly add, that on this occasion he left all her 
crew to the Elizabeth. 

Some of the stories of Mr Forsyth's sailors may serve to 
enliven my narrative. The master of the Elizabeth, in one 
of his Dutch voyages, when on the eve of sailing for Scot- 
land, had gone into a tavern with the merchant from whom 
he had purchased his cargo, and was shown by mistake 
into a room in which there lay an old woman ill of a 
malignant fever. The woman regarded him with a long 
and ghastly stare, which haunted him all the evening after ; 
and during the night he was seized by the fever. He sent 
for a physician of the place. His vessel was bound for sea, 
he said, and the crew would be wholly unable to bring her 
home without him. Had he no medicine potent enough to 
arrest the progress of the disease for about a week ? The 
physician replied in the affirmative, and prescribed with 
apparent confidence. The master quitted his bed on the 
strength of the prescription, and the vessel sailed for 
Cromarty. A storm arose, and there was not a seaman 
aboard who outwrought or outwatched the master. He 
began to droop, however, as the weather moderated, and 
his strength had so failed him on reaching Cromarty, that 
his sailors had to carry him home in a litter. The fever 
had returned, and more than six weeks elapsed after his 
arrival ere he had so far recovered from it as to be able to 
leave his bed. The story is, I believe, strictly true ; but 



336 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

in accounting, in the present day, for the main fact which 
it supplies, we would, perhaps, be inclined to attribute less 
than our fathers did to the skill of the physician, and more 
to the force of imagination, and to those invigorating ener- 
gies which a sense of danger awakens. 

Old Saunders M'lver, the mate of the Elizabeth, was one 
of the most devout and excellent men of the place. There 
was in some degree, too, a sort of poetical interest attached 
to him, from the dangers which he had encountered, and 
the strange sights which he had seen. He had seen smoke 
and flame bursting out of the sea in the far Pacific, and had 
twice visited those remote parts of the world which lie 
directly under our feet, — a fact which all his townsmen 
credited, for Saunders himself had said it, but which few 
of them could understand. In one of his long voyages, the 
crew with whom he sailed were massacred by some of the 
wild natives of the Indian Archipelago, and he alone escaped 
by secreting himself in the rigging, and from thence slipping 
unobserved into one of the boats, and then cutting her 
loose. But he was furnished with neither oars nor sail ; and 
it was not until he had been tossed at the mercy of the tides 
and winds of the Indian Ocean for nearly a week that he 
was at length picked up by a European vessel. So power- 
fully was he impressed on this occasion, that it is said he 
was never after seen to smile. He was a grave and some- 
what hard-favoured man, powerful in bone and muscle even 
after he had considerably turned his sixtieth year, and much 
respected for his inflexible integrity and the depth of his 
religious feelings. Both Saunders and his wife (a person of 
equal worth with himself) were especial favourites with Mr 



A SCO TCH MERC HA N T. 337 

Porteous of Kilmuir, — a minister of the same class with the 
Pedens, Renwicks, and Cargills of a former age; and on 
one occasion, when the sacrament was held in his parish, 
and Saunders was absent on one of his Dutch voyages, Mrs 
MTver was an inmate of the manse. A tremendous storm 
burst out in the night-time ; and the poor woman lay awake, 
listening in utter terror to the fearful roarings of the wind, 
as it howled in the chimneys, and shook the casements 
and the door. At length, when she could lie still no longer, 
she arose and crept along the passage to the door of the 
minister's chamber. " Oh, Air Porteous !" she said, "Mr 
Porteous, do ye no hear that, — and poor Saunders on his 
way back fra Holland ! Oh, rise, rise, and ask the strong 
help o' your Master." The minister accordingly rose, and 
entered his closet. The Elizabeth, at this critical moment, 
was driving onwards through the spray and darkness along 
the northern shore of the Moray Frith. The fearful skerries 
of Shandwick, w^here so many gallant vessels have perished, 
were close at hand, and the increasing roll of the sea showed 
the gradual shallowing of the water. M'lver, and his old 
townsman Robert Hossack, stood together at the binnacle. 
An immense wave came rolling behind, and they had but 
barely time to clutch to the nearest hold, when it broke over 
them half-mast high, sweeping spars, bulwarks, cordage, all 
before it in its course. It passed, but the vessel rose not. 
Her deck remained buried in a sheet of foam, and she seemed 
settling down by the head. There was a frightful pause. 
First, however, the bowsprit and the beams of the windlass 
began to emerge ; next the forecastle, — the vessel seemed as 
if shaking herself from the load ; and then the whole deck 



338 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

appeared, as she went tilting over the next. wave. " There 
are still more mercies in store for us," said M'lver, address- 
ing his companion ; " she floats still." " Oh, Saunders ! 
Saunders!" exclaimed Robert, " there was surely some 
God's soul at work for us, or she would never have cowed 
yon." 

There is a somewhat similar story told of two of Mr 
Forsyth's boatmen. They were brothers, and of a much 
lighter character than Saunders and his companion; but 
their mother, who was old and bed-ridden, was a person 
of singular piety. They had left her, when setting out on 
one of their Caithness voyages, in so low a state, that they 
could scarce entertain any hope of again seeing her in life. 
On their return they were wrecked on the rocky coast of 
Tarbat, and it was with much difficulty that they succeeded 
in saving their lives. " Oh, brother, lad!" said the one 
to the other, on reaching the shore, " our poor old mither 
is gone at last, or yon widna have happened us. We maun 
just be learning to pray for ourselves." And the inference, 
says the story, was correct, for the good old woman had 
died about half an hour before the accident occurred. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Mr Forsyth's Second Marriage — Character of his Wife — His usual 
round of Occupation — Meggie o' the Shore — The late Mr Charles 
Grant — Hymn. 

Unmarried men of warm affections and social habits begin 
often, after turning their fortieth year, to feel themselves too 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 339 

much alone in the world for happiness, and to look forward 
with more of fear than of desire to a solitary and friendless 
old age. William Eorsyth, a man of the kindliest feelings, 
on completing his forty-first year, was still a widower ; his 
mother had declined into the vale of life ; his two brothers 
had settled down, as has been already related, in distant 
parts of the country. There were occasional gaps, too, 
occurring in the circle in which he moved. Disease, decay, 
and accident kept up the continual draught of death ; 
friends and familiar faces were dropping away and dis- 
appearing ; and he began to find that he was growing too 
solitary for his own peace. The wound, however, which his 
affections had sustained rather more than ten years before 
had been gradually closing under the softening influence of 
time. The warmth of his affections and the placidity of his 
temper fitted him in a peculiar manner for domestic happi- 
ness j and it was his great good fortune to meet, about this 
period, with a lady through whom, all unwittingly on hei 
part, he was taught to regard himself as no longer solitary 
in the present, nor devoid of hope for the future. He was 
happy in his attachment, and early in 1764 she became his 
wife. 

Miss Elizabeth Grant, daughter of the Rev. Patrick Grant 
of Duthel, in Strathspey, and of Isabella Kerr of Ruthven 
Manse, was born in Duthel in the year 1742, and removed 
to Nigg, in Ross-shire, about twelve years after, on the in- 
duction of her father into that parish. Her character was 
as little a common one as that of Mr Forsyth himself. 
Seldom, indeed, does nature produce a finer intellect, — 
never a warmer or more compassionate heart. It is rarely 



340 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

that the female mind educates itself. The genius of the 
sex is rather fine than robust ; it partakes rather of the 
delicacy of the myrtle than the strength of the oak, and 
care and culture seem essential to its full development. 
There have been instances, however, though rare, of women 
working their almost unassisted way from the lower to the 
higher levels of intelligence ; and the history of this lady, 
had she devoted her time more to the registration of her 
thoughts than to the duties of her station, would have fur- 
nished one of these. She was, in the best sense of the 
term, an original thinker, — one of the few whose innate 
vigour of mind carry them in search of truth beyond the 
barriers of the conventional modes of thought. But strong 
good sense, rising almost to the dignity of philosophy, a 
lively imagination, and a just and delicate taste, united to 
very extensive knowledge and nice discernment, though 
these rendered her conversation the delight of the circle in 
which she moved, formed but the subordinate excellencies 
of her character. She was one of the truly good, — the 
friend of her species and of her God. A diary, found 
among her papers after her death, and now in the posses- 
sion of her friends, shows that the transcript of duty which 
her life afforded was carefully collated every day with the 
perfect copy with which Revelation supplied her, and her 
every thought, word, and action laid open to the eye of 
Omniscience. In the expressive language of Scripture, she 
was one of those " who walk with God." There was 
nought, however, of harshness or austerity in her religion ; 
it formed the graceful and appropriate garb of a tender- 
hearted and beautiful woman of engaging manners and high 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 341 

talent. With this lady Mr Forsyth enjoyed all of good and 
happiness that the married state can afford for the long 
period of thirty-six years. 

His life was a busy one : his very pleasures were all of 
the active kind ; and yet, notwithstanding his numerous 
engagements, it was remarked that there were few men who 
contrived to find more spare time than Mr Forsyth, or who 
could devote half a day more readily to the service of a 
friend or neighbour. But his leisure hours were hardly 
and fairly earned. He rose regularly, winter and summer, 
between five and six o'clock, lighted his office fire if the 
weather was cold, wrote out his letters for the day, and 
brought up his books to the latest period. Ere the family 
was summoned to breakfast he was generally wellnigh the 
conclusion of his mercantile labours. The family then met 
for morning prayer ; for, like the Cottar in Burns, Mr For- 
syth was the priest of his household, and led their devotions 
morning and evening. An hour or two more spent in his 
office set him free for the remainder of the day from labour 
on his own behalf; the rest he devoted to the good of 
others and his own amusement. Once a month he held a 
regular Justice of Peace Court, in which he was occasion- 
ally assisted by some of the neighbouring proprietors, whose 
names, like his own, were on the Commission of the Peace. 
But the age was a rude one ; and differences were so fre- 
quently occurring among the people, that there were few 
days in which his time was not occupied from twelve till 
two in his honoured capacity of peace-maker for the place. 
The evening was more his own. Sometimes he super- 
intended the lading or unlading of his vessels ; sometimes 



342 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

he walked out into the country to visit his humble friends 
in the landward part of the parish, and see how they were 
getting on with their spinning. There was not a good old 
man or woman within six miles of Cromarty, however de- 
pressed by poverty, that Mr Forsyth did not reckon among 
the number of his acquaintance. 

Of all his humble friends, however, one of the most re- 
spected, and most frequently visited by him, was a pious, 
though somewhat eccentric, old woman, who lived all alone 
in a little solitary cottage beside the sea, rather more than 
two miles to the west of the town, and who was known to 
the people of the place as Meggie o' the Shore. Meggie 
was one of the truly excellent, — a person in whom the 
Durhams and Rutherfords of a former age would have 
delighted. There was no doubt somewhat of harshness 
in her opinions, and of credulity in her beliefs ; but never 
were there opinions or beliefs more conscientiously held; 
and the general benevolence of her disposition served 
wonderfully to soften in practice all her theoretical asperi- 
ties. She was ailing and poor • and as she was advancing 
in years, and her health became more broken, her little 
earnings — for she was one of Mr Forsyth's spinners — were 
still growing less. Meggie, however, had " come of decent 
people," though their heads had been all laid low in the 
churchyard long ere now ; and though she was by far too 
orthodox to believe, with the son of Sirach, that it "is 
better to die than to beg," it was not a thing to be thought 
of that she should do dishonour to the memory of the 
departed by owing even a single meal to the charity of the 
parish. She toiled on, therefore, as she best could, content 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 343 

with the merest pittance, and complained to no one. Mr 
Forsyth, who thoroughly understood the character, and ap- 
preciated its value, and who knew, withal, how wretchedly 
inadequate Meggie' s earnings were to her support, contrived 
on one occasion to visit her early, and to stay late, in the 
hope of being invited to eat with her; for in her more 
prosperous days there were few of her visitors suffered to 
leave her cottage until, as she herself used to express it, 
they had first broken bread. At this time, however, there 
was no sign of the expected invitation; and it was not 
until Mr Forsyth had at length risen to come away that 
Meggie asked him hesitatingly whether he would " no tak* 
some refreshment afore he went ? " 

" I have just been waiting to say yes," said the merchant, 
sitting down again. Meggie placed before him a half-cake 
of barley bread and a jug of water. 

"It was the feast of the promise," she said; " thy bread 
shall be given thee, and thy water shall be sure." 

The merchant saw that, in her effort to be hospitable, she 
had exhausted her larder; and without remarking that the 
portion was rather a scanty one, partook with apparent 
relish of his share of the half-cake ; but he took especial 
care, from that time forward till the death of Meggie, which 
did not take place till about eight years after, that her 
feasts should not be so barely and literally feasts of the 
promise. 

Mr Forsyth, in the midst of his numerous engagements, 
found leisure for a few days every year to visit his relatives 
in Moray. The family of his paternal grandfather, a farmer 
of Elginshire, had been a numerous one ; and he had an 



344 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

uncle settled in Elgin as a merchant and general dealer, 
who was not a great many years older than himself. For 
the judgment of this gentleman Mr Forsyth entertained the 
highest respect, and he rarely engaged in any new under- 
taking without first consulting him. Indeed, a general 
massiveness of intellect and force of character seemed 
characteristic of the family, and these qualities the well- 
known work of this gentleman's son, " Forsyth's Italy," 
serves happily to illustrate. There is perhaps no book of 
travels in the language in which the thoughts lie so closely, 
or in the perusal of which the reader, after running over the 
first few chapters, gives himself up so entirely to the judg- 
ment of the author. The work is now in its fourth edition ; 
and a biographical memoir of the writer, appended to it by 
his younger brother, Mr Isaac Forsyth of Elgin, shows how 
well and pleasingly the latter gentleman could have written, 
had he employed in literature those talents which have 
rendered him, like his father and his cousin, eminently 
successful in business. 

When on one of his yearly visits, Mr Forsyth inquired of 
his uncle whether he could not point out to him among his 
juvenile acquaintance in Elgin, some steady young lad of 
good parts, whom he might engage as an assistant in his 
business at Cromarty. Its more mechanical details, he 
said, were such as he himself could perhaps easily master ; 
but then, occupying his time as they did, without employ- 
ing his mind, they formed a sort of drudgery of the pro- 
fession, for which he thought it might prove in the end 
a piece of economy to pay. His uncle acquiesced in the 
remark, and recommended to his notice an ingenious young 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 345 

A ad who had just left school, after distinguishing himself by 
his attainments as a scholar, and who was now living un- 
employed with some friends at Elgin. The lad was accord- 
ingly introduced to Mr Forsyth, who was much pleased 
with his appearance and the simple ingenuousness of his 
manners, and on his return he brought him with him to 
Cromarty. 

Charles Grant, for so the young man was called, soon 
became much a favourite with Mr Forsyth and his family, 
and was treated by them rather as a son than a dependent. 
He had a taste for reading, and Mr Forsyth furnished him 
with books. He introduced him, too, to all his more intel- 
ligent and more influential friends, and was alike liberal in 
assisting him, as the case chanced to require, with his purse 
and his advice. The young man proved himself eminently 
worthy of the kindness he received. He possessed a mind 
singularly well balanced in all its faculties, moral and intel- 
lectual; he added great quickness to great perseverance; 
much warmth and kindliness of feeling to an unyielding 
rectitude of principle ; and strong good sense to the poeti- 
cal temperament. He remained with Mr Forsyth for about 
five years, and then parted from him for some better 
appointment in London, which he owed to his friendship. 
It would be no unprofitable or uninteresting task to trace 
his after-course ; but the outlines of his history are already 
known to most of my readers. His extensive knowledge 
and very superior talents rendered his services eminently 
useful ; his known integrity procured him respect and con- 
fidence ; the goodness of his disposition endeared him to 
an extensive and ever-widening circle of friends. He rose 



346 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

gradually through a series of employments, each in progres- 
sion more important and honourable than the one which 
had preceded it. He rilled for many years the chair .of the 
Honourable East India Company's Court of Directors ; and 
represented the county of Inverness in several successive 
Parliaments; and of two of his sons, one has had the 
dignity of knighthood conferred upon him for his public 
services, and the other occupies an honourable because 
well-earned place among the British peerage. Mr Grant 
continued through life to cherish the memory of his bene- 
factor, and to show even in old age the most marked and 
assiduous attentions to the surviving members of his family. 
He procured writerships for two of his sons, John and 
Patrick Forsyth; and, at a time when his acquaintance 
extended over all the greater merchants of Europe, he used 
to speak of him as a man whose judgment and probity, 
joined to his singularly liberal views and truly generous 
sentiments, would have conferred honour on the magisterial 
chair of the first commercial city of the world. It was 
when residing in the family of William Forsyth that Mr 
Grant first received those serious impressions of the vital 
importance of religion which so influenced his conduct 
through life, and to which he is said to have given expres- 
sion, when on the verge of another world, in one of the 
finest hymns in the language. Need I apologise to the 
reader for introducing it here ? 

HYMN. 

With years oppress' d, with sorrows worn, 
Dejected, harass'd, sick, forlorn, 
To Thee, O God ! I pray ; 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 347 

To Thee these wither' d hands arise ; 
To Thee I lift these failing eyes ; — 
Oh, cast me not away. 

Thy mercy heard my infant prayer ; 
Thy love, with all a mother's care, 

Sustain'd my childish days ; 
Thy goodness watch' d my ripening youth, 
And form'd my soul to love Thy truth, 

And fill'd my heart with praise. 

O Saviour, has Thy grace declined ? 
Can years affect the Eternal Mind, 

Or time its love decay ? 
A thousand ages pass Thy sight, 
And all their long and weary flight 

Is gone like yesterday. 

Then, even in age and grief, Thy name 
Shall still my languid heart inflame, 

And bow my faltering knee. 
Oh, yet this bosom feels the fire, 
This trembling hand and drooping lyre 

Have yet a strain for thee. 

Yes, broken, tuneless, still, O Lord ! 
This voice, transported, shall record 

Thy bounty, tried so long ; 
Till, sinking slow, with calm decay, 
Its feeble murmurs melt away 

Into a seraph's song. 



343 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 



CHAPTER VIII. 

George Ross of Cromarty — Active Benevolence of liis Character — 
Schemes for the Improvement of the People — Finds in Mr For- 
syth a Man after his own Heart — The Merchant engages in 
Agriculture. 

The year 1772 was a highly important one to the people 
of Cromarty. By far the greater part of the parish is occu- 
pied by one large and veiy valuable property, which, after 
remaining in the possession of one family for nearly a thou- 
sand years, had passed in little more than a century through 
a full half dozen. It was purchased in the latter part ot 
this year by George Ross, a native of Ross-shire, who had 
realised an immense fortune in England as an army agent. 
He was one of those benefactors of the species who can 
sow liberally in the hope of a late harvest for others to 
reap ; and the town's-people, even the poorest and least 
active, were soon made to see that they had got a neigh- 
bour who would suffer them to be idle or wretched no 
longer. 

He found in William Forsyth a man after his own heart 
— one with whom to concert and advise, and who entered 
w r armly into all his well-laid schemes for awakening the 
energies and developing the yet untried resources of the 
country. The people seemed more than half asleep around 
them ; the mechanic spent wellnigh two-thirds of his time 
in catching fish and cultivating his little croft ; the farmer 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 349 

raised from his shapeless particoloured patches, of an acre 
or two apiece, the same sort of half crops that had satisfied 
his grandfather. The only trade in the country was that 
originated and carried on by Mr Forsyth, and its only 
manufacture the linen one, which he superintended. In 
this state of things, it was the part assigned to himself by 
the benevolent and patriotic agent, now turned of seventy, 
to revolutionise and give a new spirit to the whole ; and 
such was his untiring zeal and statesmen-like sagacity, that 
he fully succeeded. 

One of his first gifts to the place was a large and commo- 
dious pier for the accommodation of trading vessels. He 
then built an extensive brewery, partly with the view to 
check the trade in smuggling, which prevailed at this time 
in the north of Scotland to an enormous extent, and partly 
to open a new market to the farmers for the staple grain of 
the country. The project succeeded, and the agent's ex- 
cellent ale supplanted in no small measure, from Aberdeen 
to John O' Groat's, the gins and brandies of the Continent. 
He then established a hempen manufactory, which has ever 
since employed about two hundred people within its walls, 
and fully twice that number without ; and set on foot a 
trade in pork, which has paid the rents of half the widows' 
cottages in the country for the last forty years, and is still 
carried on by the traders of the place to an extent of from 
fifteen to twenty thousand pounds annually. He established 
a nail and spade manufactory, brought women from Eng- 
land to instruct the young girls in the art of working lace, 
provided houses for the poor, presented the town with a 
near, substantial building, the upper part of which serves 



350 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

as a council-room, and the lower as a prison, and built — 
for the accommodation of the poor Highlanders, who came 
thronging into the town to work on his lands or in his 
manufactories — a handsome Gaelic chapel. He set him- 
self, too, to initiate his tenantry in the art of rearing wheat ; 
and finding them woefully unwilling to become wiser on the 
subject, he tried the force of example by taking an exten- 
sive farm under his own management, and conducting it on 
the most approved principles of modern agriculture. It is 
truly wonderful how much may be effected by the well- 
directed energies of one benevolent and vigorous mind : it 
is to individuals, not masses, that the species owe their 
advancement in the scale of civilisation and rationality. 
George Ross was a man far advanced in life when he pur- 
chased the lands of Cromarty, and he held them for but 
fourteen years, for he died in 1786, at the great age of 
eighty-five ; and yet in these few years, which might be re- 
garded as but the fag-end of a busy life, he did more for 
the north of Scotland than had been accomplished by all its 
other proprietors put together since the death of President 
Forbes. 

Mr Forsyth was ever ready to second the benevolent and 
well-laid schemes of the agent. He purchased shares .in 
his hempen manufactory, — for Mr Ross, the more widely to 
extend its interests, had organised a company to carry it 
on ; and took a fine snug farm in the neighbourhood of the 
town into his own hands, to put into practice all he had 
learned of the new system of farming. Agriculture was 
decidedly one of the most interesting studies of the period. 
It was still a field of experiment and discovery \ new prin- 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 351 

ciples, little dreamed of by our ancestors, were elicited 
every year ; and though there were hundreds of intelligent 
minds busy in exploring it, much remained a sort of terra 
incognita notwithstanding. Mr Forsyth soon became a 
zealous and successful farmer, and spent nearly as much of 
his evenings in his fields as he did of his mornings in his 
counting-house. The farmers around him were wedded to 
their old prejudices, but the merchant had nothing to un- 
learn ; and though his neighbours smiled at first to see him 
rearing green crops of comparatively little value from lands 
for which he paid a high rent, or, more inexplicable still, 
paying the rent, and suffering the lands to lie fallow, they 
could not avoid being convinced at last that he was actu- 
ally raising more corn than any of themselves. Though 
essentially a practical man, and singularly sober and judi- 
cious in all his enterprises, his theoretical speculations were 
frequently of a bolder character, and he delighted in rea- 
soning on the causes of the various phenomena with which 
his new study presented him. The exhaustive properties of 
some kinds of crop, the restorative qualities of others, the 
mysteries of the vegetative pabulum, its well-marked dis- 
tinctness from the soil which contains it, — how, after one 
variety of grain has appropriated its proper nourishment, 
and then languished for lack of sustenance, another variety 
continues to draw its food from the same tract, and after 
that, perhaps, yet another variety more, — how, at length, 
the productive matter is so exhausted that all is barrenness, 
until, after the lapse of years, it is found to have accumu- 
lated again : — all these, with the other mysteries of vegeta- 
tion, furnished him with interesting subjects of thought and 



352 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

inquiry. One of the best and largest of his fields was 
situated on the edge of that extensive tract of table-land 
which rises immediately above the town, and commands so 
pleasing a prospect of the bay and the opposite shore j and 
from time immemorial the footpath which skirts its lower 
edge, and overlooks the sea, had been a favourite promen- 
ade of the inhabitants. What, however, was merely a foot- 
path in the early part of each season grew broad enough for 
a carriage road before autumn, and much of Mr Forsyth's 
best braird was trampled down and' destroyed every year. 
His ploughman would fain have excluded the walkers, and 
hinted at the various uses of traps and spring-guns ; at any 
rate, he said, he was determined to build up the slap ; but 
the merchant, though he commended his zeal, negatived 
the proposal, and so the slap was suffered to remain un- 
built. On sometimes meeting with parties of the more 
juvenile saunterers, he has gravely cautioned them to avoid 
his ploughman, Donald M'Candie. Donald, he would say, 
was a cross-grained old man, as they all knew, and might 
both frighten them and hurt himself in running after them. 
Mr Forsyth retained the farm until his death ; and it shows 
in some little degree the estimation in which he was held 
by the people, that his largest field, though it has repeatedly 
changed its tenant since then, still retains the name of 
Mr Forsyth's park. 

Shortly after he had engaged with the farm, Mr Forsyth 
built for himself a neat and very commodious house, which, 
at the time of its erection, was beyond comparison the best 
in the place, and planted a large and very fine garden. 
Both serve to show how completely this merchant of the 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 353 

eighteenth century had anticipated the improvements of the 
nineteenth. There are not loftier nor better proportioned 
rooms in the place, larger windows, nor easier stairs \ and 
his garden is such a one as would satisfy an Englishman of 
the present day. These are perhaps but little matters ; 
they serve, however, to show the taste and judgment of the 
man. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Amusements of the Place — Golf-Playing — A General Taste for the 
Ludicrous characteristic of one of the Transition Stages of Society 
— The Town's Fishermen — Anecdote. 

I am not of opinion that the people of the north of Scotland 
are less happy in the present age than in the age or two 
which immediately preceded it ; but I am certain they are 
not half so merry. We may not have less to amuse us than 
our fathers had ; but our amusements somehow seem less 
hearty, and are a great deal less noisy, and, instead of 
interesting the entire community, are confined to insulated 
parties and single individuals. A whole hecatomb of wild 
games have been sacrificed to the genius of trade and the 
wars of the French Revolution. The age of holidays is 
clean gone by ; the practical joke has been extinct for the 
last fifty years ; and we have to smuggle the much amuse- 
ment which we still contrive to elicit from out the eccen- 
tricities of our neighbours, as secretly as if it were the 
subject of a tax. 

In the early and more active days of Mr Forsyth, the 



354 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

national and manly exercise of golf was the favourite amuse- 
ment of the gentlemen; and Cromarty, whose links fur- 
nished a fitting scene for the sport, was the meeting-place 
of one of the most respectable golf-clubs in the country. 
Sir Charles Ross of Balnagown, Sheriff M'Leod of Geanis, 
Mr Forsyth, and the lairds of Newhall, Pointzfield, and 
Braelanguil, were among its members. Both the sheriff 
and Sir Charles were very powerful men, and good players. 
It was remarked, however, that neither of them dealt a 
more skilful or more vigorous blow than Mr Forsyth, whose 
frame, though not much above the middle size, was singu- 
larly compact and muscular. He excelled, too, in his 
younger days, in all the other athletic games of the country. 
Few men threw a longer bowl, or pitched the stone or the 
bar farther beyond the ordinary bound. Every meeting of 
the golf-players cost him a dinner and a dozen or two of 
his best wine ; for invariably, when they had finished their 
sport for the day, they adjourned to his hospitable board, 
and the evening passed in mirth and jollity. Some of the 
anecdotes which furnished part of their laughter on these 
occasions still survive ; and, with the assistance of the wine, 
they must have served the purpose wonderfully well. All 
the various casks and boxes used by Mr Forsyth in his 
trade were marked with his initials W. K, that he might be 
the better able to identify them ; they were sometimes 
suffered so to accumulate in the outhouses of the neigh- 
bouring proprietors, that they met the eye at every turning ; 
and at no place was this more the case than at Pointzfield. 
On one occasion a swarm of Mr Forsyth's bees took flight 
in the same direction : they flew due west along the shore, 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 355 

followed by a servant, and turned to the south at the 
Pointzfield woods, where the pursuer lost sight of them. 
In about half an hour after, however, a swarm of bees were 
discovered in the proprietor's garden, and the servant came 
to claim them in the name of his master. 

" On what pretence ? " demanded the proprietor. 

" Simply," said the man, " because my master lost a 
swarm to-day, which I continued to follow to the beginning 
of the avenue yonder; and these cannot be other than 
his." 

u Nonsense," replied the proprietor; " had they belonged 
to your master, they would have been marked by the W. F., 
every one of them." 

Eventually, however, Mr Forsyth got his bees ; but there 
were few golf-meetings at which the story was not cited 
against him by way of proof that there were occasions when 
even he, with all his characteristic forethought, could be as 
careless as other men. 

It was chiefly in his capacity of magistrate, however, that 
Mr Forsyth was brought acquainted with the wilder 
humours of the place. Some of the best jokes of the 
townsmen were exceedingly akin to felonies ; and as the 
injured persons were in every case all the angrier for being 
laughed at, they generally applied for redress to their magis- 
trate. There is a transition stage in society, — a stage 
between barbarism and civilisation, — in which, through one 
of the unerring instincts of our nature, men employ their 
sense of the ludicrous in laughing one another into pro- 
priety ; and such was the stage at which society had arrived 
in the north of Scotland in at least the earlier part of Mr 



356 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

Forsyth's career. Cromarty was, in consequence, a merry 
little place, though the merriment was much on the one 
side, and of a woefully selfish character. The young, like 
those hunting parties of Norway that band together for the 
purpose of ridding their forests of the bears, used in the 
long winter evenings to go prowling about the streets in 
quest of something that might be teazed and laughed at ; 
the old, though less active in the pursuit, — for they kept to 
their houses, — resembled the huntsmen of the same country 
who lie in wait for the passing animal on the tops of trees. 
Their passion for the ludicrous more than rivalled the 
Athenian rage for the new ; and while each one laughed 
at his neighbour, he took all care to avoid being laughed 
at in turn. 

The poor fishermen of the place, from circumstances con- 
nected with their profession, were several degrees lower in 
the scale of civilisation than most of their neighbours. 
The herring fishery had not yet taught them to speculate, 
nor were there Sabbath schools to impart to them the 
elements of learning and good manners ; and though there 
might be, perhaps, one of fifty among them possessed of a 
smattering of Latin, it was well if a tithe of the remaining 
forty-nine had learned to read. They were, however, a 
simple, inoffensive race of people, whose quarrels, like their 
marriages, (for they quarrelled often, though at a small 
expense,) were restricted to their own class, and who, though 
perhaps little acquainted with the higher standards of right, 
had a code of foolish superstitions, which, strange as it may 
seem, served almost the same end. They respected an 
oath, in the belief that no one had ever perjured himself 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 357 

and thriven • regarded the murderer as exposed to the 
terrible visitations of his victim, and the thief as a person 
doomed to a down look; reverenced the Bible as a protec- 
tion from witchcraft, and baptism as a charm against the 
fairies. Their simplicity, their ignorance, their superstition, 
laid them open to a thousand petty annoyances from the 
wags of the town. They had a belief, long since extinct, 
that if, when setting out for the fishing, one should interro- 
gate them regarding their voyage, there was little chance of 
their getting on with it without meeting with some disaster ; 
and it was a common trick with the youngsters to run down 
to the water's edge, just as they were betaking themselves 
to their oars, and shout out, a Men, men, where are you 
going? " They used, too, to hover about their houses after 
dark, and play all manner of tricks, such as blocking up 
their chimney with turf, and stealthily filling their water- 
stoups with salt water, just as they were about setting on 
their bro chart. One of the best jokes of the period seems 
almost too good to be forgotten. 

The fairies were in ill repute at the time, and long before, 
for an ill practice of kidnapping children, and annoying 
women in the straw \ and no class of people could dread 
them more than fishers. But they were at length cured of 
their terrors by being laughed at, One evening, when all 
the men were setting out for sea, and all the women en- 
gaged at the water's edge in handing them their tackle or 
launching their boats, a party of young fellows, who had 
watched the opportunity, stole into their cottages, and, 
disfurnishing the cradles of all their little tenants, trans- 
posed the children of the entire village, leaving a child in 



358 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

the cradle of every mother, but taking care that it should 
not be her own child. They then hid themselves amid the 
ruins of a deserted hovel to wait the result. Up came the 
women from the shore ; and, alarmed by the crying of the 
children, and the strangeness of their voices, they went to 
their cradles, and found a changeling in each. The scene 
that followed baffles description. They shrieked, and 
screamed, and clapped their hands ; and, rushing out to 
the lanes like so many mad creatures, were only unhinged 
the more to find the calamity so universal. Down came 
the women of the place to make inquiries and give advices, 
— some recommending them to have recourse to the min- 
ister, some to procure baskets and suspend the changelings 
over the fire, — some one thing, some another ; but the poor 
mothers were regardless of them all. They tossed their 
arms, and shrieked, and halooed; and the children, who 
were wellnigh a,s ill at ease as themselves, added by their 
cries to the confusion and the uproar. A thought struck 
one of the townswomen. " I suspect, neighbours," she 
said, " that the loons are at the bottom of this. Let 's 
bring all the little ones into one place, and see whether 
every mother cannot find her own among them." No sooner 
said than done ; and peace was restored in a few minutes. 
Mischievous as the trick was, it had this one effect, that 
the fairies were in less repute in Cromarty ever after, and 
were never more charged with the stealing of children. 
A popular belief is in no small danger when those who 
cherished learn to laugh at it, be the laugh raised as it 
may. 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 359 



CHAPTER X. 

Hospitality of Mr Forsyth — His Benevolence extended to even the 
Bodies of the Dead — Anecdote — Character of his Guests— Em- 
ployments in behalf of his Town's-people — Mrs Forsyth. 

There were two classes of men who had no particular 
cause of gratitude to Mr Forsyth. Lawyers, notwithstand- 
ing his respect for the profession, he contrived to exclude 
from the place, for no case of dispute or difference ever 
passed himself, nor w r as there ever an appeal from his 
decisions ; and innkeepers found themselves both robbed 
of their guests by his hospitality, and in danger of losing 
their licences for the slightest irregularity that affected the 
morals of their neighbours. For at least the last twenty 
years of his life, his house, from the number of guests 
which his hospitality had drawn to it, often resembled a 
crowded inn. Did he meet with a young man of promising 
talent, however poor, who belonged in any degree to the 
aristocracy of nature, and bade fair to rise above his pre- 
sent level, he was sure of being invited to his table. Did 
he come in contact with some unfortunate aspirant who 
had seen better days, but who in his fall had preserved his 
character, he was certain of being invited too. Was there 
a wind-bound vessel in the port, Mr Forsyth was sure to 
bring the passengers home with him. Had travellers come 
to visit the place, Mr Forsyth could best tell them what all 
deserved their notice, and nowhere could he tell it half so 



3<5o A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

well as at his own table. Never was there a man who, 
through the mere indulgence of the kindlier feelings of our 
nature, contrived to make himself more friends. The 
chance visitor spent perhaps a single day under his roof, 
and never after ceased to esteem the good and benevolent 
owner. His benevolence, like that of John of Calais, in 
the old romance, extended to even the bodies of the dead ; 
an interesting instance of which I am enabled to present to 
the reader. 

Some time in the summer of 1773 or I 774> a pleasure 
yacht, the property of that Lord Byron who immediately 
preceded the poet, cast anchor in the bay of Cromarty, 
having, according to report, a dying lady on board. A 
salmon-fisher of the place, named Hossack, a man of 
singular daring and immense personal strength, rowed his 
little skiff alongside in the course of the day, bringing with 
him two fine salmon for sale. The crew, however, seemed 
wild and reckless as that of a privateer or pirate ; and he 
had no sooner touched the side, than a fellow who stood 
in the gangway dealt his light skiff so heavy a blow with a 
boat-hook, that he split one of the planks. Hossack seized 
hold of the pole, wrenched it out of the fellow's grasp, and 
was in the act of raising it to strike him down, when the 
master of the yacht, a native of Orkney, came running to 
the gunwale, and, apologising for the offered violence, in- 
vited the fisherman aboard. He accordingly climbed the 
vessel's side, and disposed of his fish. 

Lord Byron, a good-looking man, but rather shabbily 
dressed, was pacing the quarter-deck • two proprietors of 
the country, who had known him in early life, and had 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT, 361 

come aboard to pay him their respects, were seated on 
chairs near the stern. But the party seemed an unsocial 
one : his lordship continued to pace the deck, regarding 
his visitors from time to time with an expression singularly 
repulsive, while the latter had the blank look of men who, 
expecting a kind reception, are chilled by one freezingly 
cold. The fisherman was told by the master, by way of 
explanation, that his lordship, who had been when at the 
soundest a reserved man, of very eccentric habits, was now 
unsettled in mind, and had been so from the time he had 
killed a gentleman in a duel ; and that his madness seemed 
to be of a kind which, instead of changing, deepens the 
shades of the natural character. He was informed further, 
that the sick lady, a Miss Mudie, had expired that morn- 
ing; that she had had no connexion whatever with his 
lordship, but was merely an acquaintance of the master's, 
and a native of Orkney, who, having gone to Inverness for 
the benefit of her health, and becoming worse, had taken 
the opportunity, in the absence of any more eligible con- 
veyance, of returning by Lord Byron's yacht. The master, 
who seemed to be a plain, warm-hearted sailor, expressed 
much solicitude regarding the body. The unfortunate lady 
had been most respectable herself, he said, and most re- 
spectably connected ; and he was anxious that the funeral 
should be of a kind befitting her character and station; 
but then, he had scarce anything in his own power, and his 
lordship would listen to nothing on the subject. " Ah," 
replied Hossack, "but I know a gentleman who will listen 
to you, and do something more. I shall go ashore this 
moment, and tell Mr Forsyth." 



362 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

The fisherman did so, and found he had calculated 
aright. Mr Forsyth sent townVwomen aboard to dress 
the corpse, who used to astonish the children of the place 
for years after, by their descriptions of the cabin in which 
it lay. The days of steam-boats had not yet come on to 
render such things familiar; and the idea of a room 
panelled with mirrors and embossed with flowers of gold, 
was well suited to fill the young imagination. The body 
was taken ashore, and, contrary to one of the best-estab- 
lished canons of superstition, was brought to the house 
of Mr Forsyth; from which, on the following day, when 
he had invited all the better inhabitants of the place to 
attend the funeral, it was carried to his own burying- 
ground and there interred. And such was the beginning 
of a friendship between the benevolent merchant and the 
relatives of the deceased, which terminated only with the 
life of the former. Two of his visitors during the summer 
of 1795 were a Major and Mrs Mudie from Orkney. 

I may mention, in the passing, a somewhat curious cir- 
cumstance connected with Lord Byron's yacht. She 
actually sat deep in the water at the time with a cargo 
of contraband goods, most of which were afterwards un- 
loaded near Sinclair's Bay, in Caithness. Hossack, ere 
he parted from the master, closed a bargain with him for 
a considerable quantity of Hollands, and, on being brought 
astern to the vessel's peak on the evening she sailed from 
Cromarty, he found the place filled with kegs, bound 
together by pairs, and heavy weights attached to facilitate 
their sinking, in the event of their being thrown overboard. 
It is a curious, but, I believe, well authenticated fact, that 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 363 

one of the most successful smuggling vessels of the period, 
on at least the eastern coast of Scotland, was a revenue 
cutter provided by Government for the suppression of the 
trade. 

Besides the chance visitors entertained at the hospitable 
board of the merchant, there were parties of his friends and 
relatives who spent almost every summer a few weeks in 
his family. The two daughters of his brother, who had 
removed to England so long before, with the son and 
daughter of the other brother, who had settled in Dingwall, 
— the brother of his first wife, a Major Russell, with the 
brother and sisters of his second, — his relatives from Elgin, 
— a nephew, who had married into a family of rank in Eng- 
land, — and some of his English partners in the hempen 
manufactory, — were among the number of his annual 
visitors. His parties were often such as the most fastidious 
would have deemed it an honour to have been permitted 
to join. He has repeatedly entertained at his table his old 
townsman, Duncan Davidson, member of Parliament at the 
time for the shire of Cromarty, the late Lord Seaforth, Sir 
James Mackintosh, and his old protege, Charles Grant, with 
the sons of the latter, Charles and Robert. The merchant, 
when Mr Grant had quitted Cromarty for London, was a 
powerful and active man, in the undiminished vigour of 
middle life ; when he returned, after his long residence in 
India, he found him far advanced in years, indeed con- 
siderably turned of seventy, and, in at least his bodily 
powers, the mere wreck of his former self; and so affected 
was the warm-hearted Director by the contrast, that on 
grasping his hand he burst into tears. Mr Forsyth him- 



364 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

self, however, saw nothing to regret in the change. He 
was still enjoying much in his friends and his family, for his 
affections remained warm as ever, and he had still enough 
of activity left to do much good. His judgment as a 
magistrate was still sound 5 he had more time, too, than 
before to devote to the concerns of his neighbours ; for, 
with the coming on of old age, he had been gradually 
abridging his business, retaining just enough to keep up his 
accustomed round of occupation. Had a townsman died 
in any of the colonies, or in the army or navy, after saving 
some little money, it was the part of the merchant to 
recover it for the relatives of the deceased. Was the son 
or nephew of some of his humble neighbours trepanned by 
a recruiting party — and there were strange arts used for 
the purpose fifty years ago — the case was a difficult one 
indeed if Mr Forsyth did not succeed in restoring him to 
his friends. He acted as a sort of general agent for the 
district, and in every instance acted without fee or reward. 
The respect in which he was held by the people was shown 
by the simple title by which he was on every occasion de- 
signated. They all spoke of him as " the Maister." " Is 
the Maister at home ?" or, " Can I see the Maister?" were 
the queries put to his servants by the town's-folks per- 
haps ten times a-day. Masters were becoming somewhat 
common in the country at the time, and esquires not a 
great deal less so ; but the " Maister" was the designation 
of but one gentleman only, and the people who used the 
term never forgot what it meant. 

In all his many acts of kindness the merchant was well 
seconded by his wife, whose singularly compassionate dis- 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 365 

position accorded well with his own. She had among the 
more deserving poor a certain number to whom she dealt 
a regular weekly allowance, and who were known to the 
town's-people as " Mrs Forsyth's pensioners." Besides, 
rarely did she suffer a day to pass without the performance 
of some act of charity in behalf of the others who were 
without the pale ; and when sickness or distress visited a 
poor family, she was sure to visit it too. Physicians were 
by no means so common in the country at the time as they 
have since become ; and, that she might be the more useful, 
Mrs Forsyth, shortly after her marriage, had devoted her- 
self, like the ladies of an earlier period, to the study of 
medicine. Her excellent sense more than compensated 
for the irregularity of her training • and there were few pro- 
fessors of the art of healing in the district whose prescrip- 
tions were more implicitly or more successfully followed, or 
whose medicine-chest was oftener emptied and replenished. 
Mr Forsyth was by no means a very wealthy man, his hand 
had been ever too open for that ; and, besides, as money 
had been rapidly sinking in value during the whole course 
of his career as a trader, the gains of his earlier years had 
to be measured by a growing, and therefore depreciating, 
standard. It is a comfortable fact, however, that no man 
or family was ever ruined by doing good under the influence 
of right motives. Mr Forsyth's little fortune proved quite 
sufficient for all his charities and all his hospitality. It 
wore well, like the honest admiral's \ and the great bulk of 
it, though he has been nearly forty years dead, is still in the 
hands of his descendants. 



366 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 



CHAPTER XL 

Vx ogress of Opinion — Extremes — Political Changes invariably of a 
Mixed Character — Hence the Folly of too Sanguine Expectations 
— Summary of important Changes in the Condition and Character 
of the People of the North of Scotland which have taken place 
within the last Fifty Years. 

There are few things more interesting in either biography 
or history than those chance tide-marks, if I may so express 
myself, which show us the ebbs and flows of opinion, and 
how very sudden its growth when it sets in on the popular 
side. Mr Forsyth was extensively engaged in business 
when the old hereditary jurisdictions w r ere abolished, not 
in compliance with any wish expressed by the people, but 
by an unsolicited act on the part of the Government. 
Years passed, and he possessed entire all his earlier ener- 
gies, when he witnessed from one of the windows of his 
house in Cromarty the procession of a Liberty and Equality 
Club. The processionists were afterwards put down by the 
gentlemen of the county, and their leader, a young man of 
more wit than judgment, sent to the jail of Tain ; but the 
merchant took no part either for or against them. He 
merely remarked to one of his friends, that there is as cer- 
tainly a despotism of the people as of their rulers, and that 
it is from the better and wiser, not from the lower and more 
unsettled order of minds, that society need look for what- 
ever is suited to benefit or adorn it. He had heard of the 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 367 

Dundees and Dalziels of a former age, but he had heard 
also of its Jack Cades and Massaniellos ; and, after out- 
living the atrocities of Robespierre and Danton, he found 
no reason to regard the tyranny of the many with any higher 
respect than that which he had all along entertained for the 
tyranny of the few. 

The conversation of Mr Forsyth was rather solid than 
sparkling • — he was rather a wise than a witty man. Such, 
however, was the character of his remarks, that it was the 
shrewdest and best informed who listened to them with 
most attention and respect. His powers of observation 
and reflection were of no ordinary kind. His life, like old 
Nestor's, was extended through two whole generations, and 
the greater part of a third, and this, too, in a century which 
witnessed more changes in the economy and character of 
the people of Scotland than any three centuries which had 
gone before. It may not be uninteresting to the reader 
rapidly to enumerate a few of the more important of these, 
with their mixed good and evil. A brief summary may 
serve to show us, that while we should never despair of the 
improvement of society on the one hand, seeing how vast 
the difference which obtains between the opposite states of 
barbarism and civilisation, there is little wisdom in indulging, 
on the other, in dreams of a theoretical perfection, at which 
it is too probable our nature cannot arrive. Few great 
changes take place in the economy of a countiy without 
removing some of the older evils which oppressed it; few 
also without introducing into it evils that are new. 

It was in the latter days of Mr Forsyth that the modern 
system of agriculture had begun to effect those changes in 



368 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

the appearance of the country and the character of the 
people, by which the one has been so mightily improved, 
and the other so considerably lowered. The clumsy, in- 
efficient system which it supplanted was fraught with 
physical evil. There was an immense waste of labour. 
A large amount of the scanty produce of the country was 
consumed by a disproportionably numerous agricultural 
population ; and, from the inartificial methods pursued, 
the harvest, in every more backward season, was thrown 
far into the winter ; and years of scarcity, amounting almost 
to famine, inflicted from time to time their miseries on the 
poorer classes of the people. It was as impossible, too, in 
the nature of things, that the system should have remained 
unaltered after science had introduced her innumerable 
improvements into every other department of industry, as 
that night should continue in all its gloom in one of the 
central provinces of a country after the day had arisen in 
all the provinces which surrounded it. Nor could the 
landed interests have maintained their natural and proper 
place had the case been otherwise. There were but two 
alternatives, — advance in the general rush of improvement, 
or a standing still to be trampled under foot. With the 
more enlightened mode of agriculture the large-farm system 
is naturally, perhaps inevitably, connected ; at least, in no 
branch of industry do we find the efficient adoption of 
scientific improvement dissevered from the extensive em- 
ployment of capital. And it is this system which, within 
the last forty years, has so materially deteriorated the char- 
acter of the people. It has broken down the population of 
the agricultural districts into two extreme classes. It has 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 369 

annihilated the moral and religious race of small farmers, 
who in the last age were so peculiarly the glory of Scotland, 
and of whom the Davie Deans of the novelist, and the 
Cottar of Burns, may be regarded as the fitting representa- 
tives ; and has given us mere gentlemen-farmers and farm- 
servants in their stead. The change was in every respect 
unavoidable ; and w r e can only regret that its physical good 
should be so inevitably accompanied by what must be 
regarded as its moral and political evil. 

It was during the long career of Mr Forsyth, and in no 
small degree under his influence and example, that the 
various branches of trade still pursued in the north of Scot- 
land were first originated. He witnessed the awakening of 
the people, from the indolent stupor in which extreme 
poverty and an acquiescent subjection to the higher classes 
were deemed unavoidable consequences of their condition, 
to a state of comparative comfort and independence. He 
saw what had been deemed the luxuries of his younger 
days placed, by the introduction of habits of industry, and 
a judicious division of labour, within the reach of almost 
the poorest. He saw, too, the first establishment of branch 
banks in the north of Scotland, and the new life infused, 
through their influence, into every department of trade. 
They conferred a new ability of exertion on the people, by 
rendering their available capital equal to the resources of 
their trade, and gave to character a money-value which even 
the most profligate were compelled to recognise and respect. 
Each of these items of improvement, however, had its own 
peculiar drawback. Under the influence of the commercial 
spirit, neighbours have become less kind, and the people in 

2 A 



370 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

general less hospitable. The comparative independence of 
the poorer classes has separated them more widely from 
the upper than they had ever been separated before \ and 
mutual jealousies and heart-burnings mark, in consequence, 
the more ameliorated condition. The number of traders 
and shopkeepers has become disproportionably large ; and 
while a few succeed and make money, and a few more 
barely maintain their ground at an immense expense of 
care and exertion, there is a considerable portion of the 
class who have to struggle on for years, perhaps involved 
in a labyrinth of shifts and expedients that prove alike 
unfavourable to their own character and to the security of 
trade in general, and then end in insolvency at last. The 
large command of money, too, furnished at times by impru- 
dent bank accommodation, has in some instances awakened 
a spirit of speculation among the people, which seems but 
too much akin to that of the gambler, and which has 
materially lowered the tone of public morals in at least 
the creditor and debtor relation. Bankruptcy, in conse- 
quence, is regarded with very different feelings in the 
present day from what it was sixty years ago. It has lost 
much of the old infamy which used to pass downwards 
from a man to his children, and is now too often looked 
upon as merely the natural close of an unlucky speculation, 
or, worse still, as a sort of speculation in itself. 

There is one branch of trade, in particular, which has 
been suffered to increase by far too much for the weal of 
the country. More than two thousand pounds are squan- 
dered yearly in the town of Cromarty in spirituous liquors 
alone, — a larger sum than that expended in tea, sugar, 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 371 

coffee, soap, and candles, put together. The evil is one of 
enormous magnitude, and unmixed in its character; nor is 
there any part of the country, and, indeed, few families, in 
which its influence is not felt. And yet in some of the 
many causes which have led to it we may trace the work- 
ings of misdirected good, natural and political. A weak 
compassion on the part of those whose duty it is to grant 
or withhold the licence, without which intoxicating liquors 
cannot be sold, has more than quadrupled the necessary 
number of public-houses. Has an honest man in the lower 
ranks proved unfortunate in business, — has a labourer or 
farm-servant of good character met w r ith some accident 
which incapacitates him from pursuing his ordinary labours, 
— has a respectable, decent woman lost her husband, — all 
apply for the licence as their last resource, and all are suc- 
cessful in their application. Each of their houses attracts 
its round of customers, who pass through the downward 
stages of a degradation to which the keepers themselves are 
equally exposed ; and after they have in this way irremedi- 
ably injured the character of their neighbours, their own, in 
at least nine cases out of ten, at last gives way ; and the 
fatal house is shut up, to make way for another of the same 
class, which, after performing its work of mischief on a new 
circle, is to be shut up in turn. Another great cause of the 
intemperance of the age is connected with the clubs and 
societies of modern times. Many cf these institutions are 
admirably suited to preserve a spirit of independence and 
self-reliance among the people, exactly the reverse of that 
sordid spirit of pauperism which has so overlaid the 
energies of the sister kingdom ; and there are few of them 



372 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

which do not lead to a general knowledge of at least the 
simpler practices of business, and to that spread of intelli- 
gence which naturally arises from an intercourse of mind 
in which each has somewhat to impart and somewhat to 
acquire. But they lead also, in too many instances, to the 
formation of intemperate habits among the leading mem- 
bers : there is the procession and the ball, with their neces- 
sary accompaniments : the meeting begun with . business 
ends too often in conviviality ; and there are few ac- 
quainted with such institutions who cannot assign to each 
its own train of victims. 

Another grand cause of this gigantic evil of intemper- 
ance, — a cause which fortunately exists no longer, save in 
its effects, — was of a political nature. On the breaking out 
of the revolutionary war, almost every man in the kingdom 
fit to bear arms became a soldier. Every district had its 
embodied yeomanry or local militia, — every town its vol- 
unteers. Boys who had just shot up to their full height 
were at once metamorphosed into heroes, and received 
their monthly pay ; and, under an exaggerated assumption 
of the military character, added to an unwonted command 
of pocket-money, there were habits of reckless intemper- 
ance formed by thousands and tens of thousands among 
the people, which have now held by them for more than a 
quarter of a century after the original cause has been re- 
moved, and which are passing downwards, through the in- 
fluence of example, to add to the amount of crime and 
wretchedness in other generations. 

In no respect does the last age differ more from the pre- 
sent than in the amount of general intelligence possessed 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 373 

by the people. It is not yet seventy years since Burke 
estimated the reading public of Great Britain and Ireland 
at about eighty thousand. There is a single Scotch 
periodical of the present day that finds as many purchasers 
— and on the lowest estimate twice as many readers — in 
Scotland alone. There is a total change, too, in the 
sources of popular intelligence. The press has supplanted 
the Church ; the newspaper and magazine occupy the 
place once occupied by the Bible and the Confession of 
Faith. Formerly, when there were comparatively few 
books and no periodicals in this part of the country, there 
was but one way in which a man could learn to think. 
His mind become the subject of some serious impression, 
he applied earnestly to his Bible and the Standards of the 
Church ; and in the contemplation of the most important 
of all concerns his newly-awakened faculties received their 
first exercise. And hence the nature of his influence in 
the humble sphere in which he moved, — an influence which 
the constitution of his Church from her admission of lay 
members to deliberate in her courts and to direct her 
discipline tended powerfully to increase. It was not more 
intellectual than moral, nor moral than intellectual. He 
was respected not only as one of the best, but also as one 
of the most intelligent, men in his parish, and impressed 
the tone of his own character on that of his con- 
temporaries. Popular intelligence in the present age is 
less influential, and by far less respectable in single 
individuals ; and, though of a humanising tendency in 
general, its moral effects are less decided. But it is all- 
potent in the mass of the people, and secures to them a 



374 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

political power which they never possessed before, and 
which must prove for the future their effectual guard 
against tyranny in the rulers ; unless, indeed, they should 
first by their own act break down those natural barriers 
which protect the various classes of society, by becoming 
tyrants themselves. There is a medium point beyond 
which liberty becomes licence, and licence hastens to a 
despotism which may, indeed, be exercised for a short 
time by the many, but whose inevitable tendency it is to 
pass into the hands of the few. 

A few of the causes which have tended to shut up to so 
great an extent the older sources of intelligence maybe 
briefly enumerated. Some of them have originated withi?t, 
and some without the Church. 

The benefits conferred on Scotland by the Presbyterian 
Church, during at least the two centuries which imme- 
diately succeeded the Reformation, were incalculably great. 
Somewhat of despotism there might, nay, must have been, 
in the framework of our ecclesiastical institutions. The 
age was inevitably despotic. The Church in which the 
Reformers had spent the earlier portion of their lives 
was essentially and constitutionally so. Be it remembered, 
too, that the principles of true toleration have been as 
much the discovery of later ages as those principles on 
which we construct our steam engines. But whatever the 
framework of the institutions of our Church, the soul 
which animated them was essentially that spirit " where- 
with Christ maketh His people free/' Nay, their very 
intolerance was of a kind which delighted to arm its 
vassals with a power before which all tyranny, civil or 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 37$ 

ecclesiastical, must eventually be overthrown. It com- 
pelled them to quit the lower levels of our nature for the 
higher. It demanded of them that they should be no 
longer immoral or illiterate. It enacted that the ignorant 
baron should send his children to school, that they, too, 
might not grow up in ignorance ; and provided that the 
children of the poor should be educated at the expense 
of the State. A strange despotism truly, which, by adding 
to the knowledge and the virtue of the people among 
whom it was established, gave them at once that taste and 
capacity for freedom without which men cannot be other 
than slaves, be the form of government under which they 
live what it may. 

Be it remembered too, that, whatever we of the present 
age may think of our Church, our fathers thought much 
of it. It was for two whole centuries the most popular of 
all establishments, and stamped its own character on that 
of the people. The law of patronage, as re-established 
by Oxford and Bolingbroke, first lowered its efficiency, 
— not altogether so suddenly, but quite as surely, as these 
statesmen had intended. From being a guide and leader 
of the people, it sunk, in no small degree, into a follower 
and dependent on the Government and the aristocracy. 
The old evangelical party dwindled into a minority, and 
in the majority of its members the Church of Scotland 
became essentially unpopular and uninfluential. More 
than one-half our Church stood on exactly the same 
ground which had been occupied by the curates of half 
a century before ; and the pike and musket were again 
employed in the settlement of ministers who professed 



376 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

to preach the gospel of peace. A second change for 
the worse took place about fifty years ago, when the 
modern system of agriculture was first introduced, and 
the rage for experimental farming seemed to pervade all 
classes, — ministers of the Church among the rest. Many 
of these took large farms, and engaged in the engrossing 
details of business. Some were successful, and made 
money, — some were unfortunate, and became bankrupt. 
Years of scarcity came on 3 the price of grain rose beyond 
all precedent ; and there were thousands among the 
suffering poor who could look no higher in the chain of 
causes than to the great farmers, clerical and lay, — who 
were thriving on their miseries. It is a fact which stands 
in need of no comment, that the person in the north of 
Scotland who first raised the price of oatmeal to three 
pounds per boll was a clergyman of the Established 
Church. A third change which has militated against the 
clergy is connected with that general revolution in 
manners, dress, and modes of thinking, which, during 
the last forty years, has transferred the great bulk of our 
middle classes from the highest place among the people 
to the lowest among the aristocracy, — the clergymen of our 
Church, with their families, among the rest. And a fourth 
change, not less disastrous than even the worst of the 
others, may be traced to that recent extension of the 
political franchise which has had the effect of involving 
so many otherwise respectable ministers in the essentially 
irreligious turmoil of party. There is still, however, much 
of its original vigour in the Church of Scotland, — a self- 
reforming energy which no radically corrupt Church ever 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 377 

did or can possess ; and her late efforts in shaking herself 
loose from some of the evils which have long oppressed 
her give earnest that her career of usefulness is not hasten- 
ing to its close. 

There is certainly much to employ the honest and 
enlightened among her members in the present age. At 
no time did that gulf which separates the higher from 
the lower classes present so perilous a breadth — at no 
time did it threaten the commonwealth more ; and if it 
be not in the power of the equalising influence of Chris- 
tianity to bridge it over, there is no other power that can. 
It seems quite as certain that the spread of political power 
shall accompany the spread of intelligence,, as that the 
heat of the sun shall accompany its light. It is quite as 
idle to affirm that the case should be otherwise, and that 
this power should not be extended to the people, as to 
challenge the law of gravitation, or any of the other great 
laws which regulate the government of the universe. The 
progress of mind cannot be arrested ; the power which 
necessarily accompanies it cannot be lessened. Hence 
the imminent danger of those suspicions and dislikes 
which the opposite classes entertain each of the other, 
and which are in so many instances the effects of mistake 
and misconception. The classes are so divided, that 
they never meet to compare notes, or to recognise in one 
another the same common nature. In the space which 
separates them, the eavesdropper and the tale-bearer 
find their proper province ; and thus there are heart- 
burnings produced, and jealousies fostered, which even in 
the present age destroy the better charities of society, and 



378 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

which, should the evil remain uncorrected, must inevit- 
ably produce still sadder effects in the future. Hence 
it is, too, that the mere malignancy of opposition has 
become so popular, and that noisy demagogues, whose 
sole merit consists in their hatred of the higher classes, 
receive so often the support of better men than themselves. 
It is truly wonderful how many defects, moral and in- 
tellectual, may be covered by what Dryden happily terms 
the " all-atoning name of patriot," — how creatures utterly 
broken in character and means, pitiful little tyrants in 
their fields and families, the very stuff out of which spies 
and informers are made, — are supported and cheered on 
in their course of political agitation by sober-minded men, 
who would never once dream of intrusting them with 
their private concerns. We may look for the cause in the 
perilous disunion of the upper and lower classes, and the 
widely-diffused bitterness of feeling which that disunion 
occasions. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Mr Forsyth as an Elder of the Kirk — Family Afflictions — Consolations 
amid the Infirmities of Old Age — Nice Adaptation of the Chris- 
tian Religion to the Nature of Man — Last Illness of Mr Forsyth — 
His Death — Brief Notice of His Family — Epitaph. 

Mr Forsyth was for about forty years an elder of the 
Church, and never was the office more conscientiously or 
more consistently held. It was observed, however, that, 
though not less orthodox in his belief than any of his 
brother elders, and certainly not less scrupulously strict in 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 379 

his morals, he was much less severe in his judgments on 
offenders, and less ready in sanctioning, except in extreme 
cases, the employment of the sterner discipline of the 
Church. On one occasion, when distributing the poor's 
funds, he set apart a few shillings for a poor creature of 
rather equivocal character, who had lately been visited by 
the displeasure of the Session, and who, though in wretched 
poverty, felt too much ashamed at- the time to come forward 
to claim her customary allowance. 

" Hold, Mr Forsyth," said one of the elders, a severe 
and rigid Presbyterian of the old school, — " hold ; the 
woman is a bad woman, and doesn't deserve that." 

" Ah," replied the merchant, in the very vein of Hamlet, 
" if we get barely according to our deservings, Donald, who 
of us all shall escape whipping? We shall just give the 
poor thing these few shillings which she does not deserve, 
in consideration of the much we ourselves enjoy which we 
deserve, I am afraid, nearly as little." 

" You arc a wiser man than I am, Mr Forsyth," said the 
elder, and sat down rebuked. 

No course in life is so invariably smooth and prosperous 
in its tenor, that the consolations of religion — even regard- 
ing religion as a matter of this w T orld alone — can be well 
dispensed with. There are griefs which come to all ; and the 
more affectionate the heart, and the greater its capacity of 
happiness, the more keenly are these felt. Of nine children 
which his wife bore to him, William Forsyth survived six. 
Four died in childhood ; not so early, however, but that 
they had first engaged the affections and awakened the 
hopes of their parents. A fifth reached the more mature 



380 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

age at which the intellect begins to open, and the disposi- 
tions to show what they are eventually to become, and then 
fell a victim to that insidious disease which so often holds 
out to the last its promises of recovery, and with which hope 
struggles so long and so painfully, to be overborne by dis- 
appointment in the end. And a sixth, a young man of 
vigorous talent and kindly feelings, after obtaining a writer- 
ship in India through the influence of his father's old 
protege, Mr Charles Grant, fell a victim to the climate in 
his twentieth year. Mr Forsyth bore his various sorrows, 
not as a philosopher, but as a Christian, — not as if pos- 
sessed of strength enough in his own mind to bear up 
under each succeeding bereavement, but as one deriving 
comfort from the conviction that the adorable Being who 
cared for both him and his children does not afflict His 
creatures willingly, and that the scene of existence which 
he saw closing upon them, and which was one day to close 
upon himself, is to be succeeded by another and a better 
scene, where God himself wipeth away all tears from all 
eyes. His only surviving son, John, the last of four, left 
him, as he himself had left his father more than fifty years 
before, for a house of business in London, which he after- 
wards quitted for India, on receiving an appointment there 
through the kindness of Mr Grant, Mr Forsyth accom- 
panied him to the beach, where a boat manned by six 
fishermen was in waiting to carry him to a vessel in the 
offing. He knew too surely that he was parting from him 
for ever ; but he bore up under the conviction until the 
final adieu, and then, wholly overpowered by his feelings, 
he burst into tears. Nor was the young man less affected. 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 381 

It was interesting to see the effects of this scene on the 
rude boatmen : they had never seen " the Maister " so 
affected before \ and as they bent them to their oars, there 
was not a dry eye among them. 

Age brought with it its various infirmities, and there were 
whole weeks in which Mr Forsyth could no longer see his 
friends as usual; nor even when in better health, — in at 
least what must often pass for health at seventy-seven, — 
could he quit his bedroom before the middle of the day. 
He now experienced how surely an affectionate disposition 
draws to itself, by a natural sympathy, the affection of 
others. His wife, who was still but in middle life, and 
his two surviving daughters, Catherine and Isabella, were 
unwearied in their attentions to him, — anticipating every 
wish, and securing to him every little comfort which his 
situation required, with that anxious ingenuity of affection 
so characteristic of the better order of female minds. His 
sight had so much failed him, that he could no longer 
apply to his favourite authors as before ; but one of his 
daughters used to sit and read beside him a few pages 
at a time, for his mind was less capable than formerly of 
pursuing, unfatigued, long trains of thought. At no previous 
period, however, did he relish his books more. The state 
of general debility which marked his decline resembled that 
which characterises the first stage of convalescence in linger- 
ing disorders. If his vigour of thought was lessened, his 
feelings of enjoyment seemed in proportion more exquisitely 
keen. His temper, always smooth and placid, had softened 
with his advance in years, and every new act of attention or 
kindness which he experienced seemed too much for his 



332 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

feelings. He was singularly- grateful, — grateful to his wife 
and daughters, and to the friends who from time to time 
came to sit beside his chair, and communicate to him any 
little piece of good news ; above all, grateful to the Great 
Being who had been caring for him all life long, and who 
now, amid the infirmities of old age, was still giving him so 
much to enjoy. In the prime of life, when his judgment 
was soundest and most discriminative, he had given the full 
assent of his vigorous understanding to those peculiar doc- 
trines of Christianity on which its morals are founded. He 
had believed in Jesus Christ as the sole Mediator between 
God and man ; and the truth which had received the 
sanction of his understanding then, served to occupy the 
whole of his affections now. Christ was all with him, and 
himself was nothing. The reader will perhaps pardon my 
embodying a few simple thoughts on this important subject, 
which I offer with all the more diffidence that they have 
not come to me through the medium of any other mind. 

It will be found that all the false religions of past or of 
present times, which have abused the credulity or flattered 
the judgments of men, may be divided into two grand 
classes, — the natural and the artificial. The latter are ex- 
clusively the work of the human reason, prompted by those 
uneradicable feelings of our nature which constitute man a 
religious creature. The religion of Socrates and Plato, of 
the old philosophers in general, with perhaps the exception 
of the sceptics, and a few others, — of Lord Herbert of 
Cherbury, Algernon Sidney, and Dr Channing, of all the 
better Deists, of the Unitarians too, and the Socinians of 
ino-dern times, — belong to this highly rational but unpopular 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 383 

and totally inefficient class. The God of these religions is 
a mere abstract idea, — an incomprehensible essence of 
goodness, power, and wisdom. The understanding cannot 
conceive of Him, except as a great First Cause, — as the 
incomprehensible source and originator of all things ; and 
it is surely according to reason that He should be thus 
removed from that lower sphere of conception which even 
finite intelligences can occupy to the full. But in thus 
rendering Him intangible to the understanding, He is ren- 
dered intangible to the affections also. Who ever loved an 
abstract idea ? or what sympathy can exist between human 
minds and an intelligent essence infinitely diffused ? And 
hence the cold and barren inefficiency of artificial religions. 
They want the vitality of life. They want the grand prin- 
ciple of motive, for they can lay no hold on those affections 
to which this prime mover in all human affairs can alone 
address itself. They may look well in a discourse or an 
essay, for, like all human inventions, they may be. easily 
understood and rationally defended; but they are totally 
unsuited to the nature and the wants of man. 

The natural religions are of an entirely different character. 
They are wild and extravagant ; and the enlightened reason, 
when unbiassed by the influences of early prejudice, rejects 
them as monstrous and profane. But, unlike the others, 
they have a strong hold on human nature, and exert a 
powerful control over its hopes and its fears. Men may 
build up an artificial religion as they build up a. house, and 
the same age may see it begun and completed. Natural 
religions, on the contrary, are, like the oak and the chest- 
nut, the slow growth of centuries ; — their first beginnings 



384 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

are lost in the uncertainty of the fabulous ages ; and every 
addition they receive is fitted to the credulity of the popular 
mind, ere it can assimilate itself to the mass. The grand 
cause of their popularity, however, consists in the decidedly 
human character of their gods; for it is according to the 
nature of man as a religious creature that he meets with an 
answering nature in Deity. The gods of the Greek and 
Roman were human beings like themselves, and influenced 
by a merely human favouritism : the devotion of their wor- 
shippers was but a more reverential species of friendship ; 
and there are perhaps few men of warm imaginations who 
have become acquainted in early life with the "^Eneid " of 
Virgil, or the "Telemaque " of F6nelon, who are not enabled 
to conceive, in part at least, how such a friendship could be 
entertained. The Scandinavian mythology, with the equally 
barbarous mythologies of the East, however different in 
other respects, agree in this main principle of popularity, — 
the human character of their gods. The Virgin Mother 
and the many saints of the Romish Church, with its tangi- 
bilities of pictures and images, form an indispensable com- 
pensation for its lack of the evangelical principle ; and it is 
undoubtedly to the w T ell-defmed and easily-conceived char- 
acter of Mohammed that Allah owes the homage of the 
unreckoned millions of the East. 

Now, it is according to reason and analogy that the true 
religion should be formed, if I may so express myself, on a 
popular principle, — that it should be adapted with all the 
fitness which constitutes the argument of design to that 
human nature which must be regarded as the production of 
the common Author of both. It is indispensable that the 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 385 

religion which God reveals should be suited to the human 
nature which God has made. Artificial religions, with all 
their minute rationalities, are not suited to it at all, and 
therefore take no hold on the popular mind : natural reli- 
gions, with all their immense popularity, are not suited to 
improve it. It is Christianity alone which unites the popu- 
larity of the one class with the rationality, and more than 
the purity, of the other, — that gives to the Deity, as man, 
His strong hold on the human affections, and restores to 
Him, in His abstract character as the Father of all, the 
homage of the understanding. 

The change which must come to all was fast coming on 
William Forsyth. There was a gradual sinking of his 
powers, bodily and intellectual, — a thorough prostration of 
strength and energy ; and yet, amid the general wreck of 
the man, the affections remained entire and unbroken ; and 
the idea that the present scene of things is to be succeeded 
by another was as continually present with him as when, in 
the possession of his whole mind, he had first felt the in- 
fluence of bodily decay. Weeks had passed in which he 
could no longer quit his bed. On the day he died, how- 
ever, he expressed a wish to be brought to a chair which 
stood fronting a window, and the wish was complied with. 
The window commands a full view of the main street of the 
place j but though his face was turned in that direction, his 
attendants could not suppose that he took note any longer 
of the objects before him ; the eyes were open, but the 
sense seemed shut. The case, however, was otherwise, 
A poor old woman passed by, and the dying man recog- 
nised her at once. " Ah, yonder," he said, addressing one 

2 B 



386 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

of his daughters who stood by him, " is poor old Widow 
Watson, whom I have not seen now for many weeks ; take 
a shilling for her out of my purse, and tell her it is the last 
she will ever get from me." And so it was, and such was 
the closing act of a long and singularly useful life ; for his 
death, unaccompanied apparently by aught of suffering, 
took place in the course of the evening, only a few hours 
after. He had completed his seventy-eighth year. All 
the men of the place attended his funeral, and many from 
the neighbouring country ■ and there were few among the 
assembled hundreds who crowded round his grave to catch 
a last glimpse of the coffin who did not feel that they had 
lost a friend. He was one of nature's noblemen ; and the 
sincere homage of the better feelings is an honour reserved 
exclusively to the order to which he belonged. 

Mrs Forsyth survived her husband for eight years ; and 
after living in the continued exercise of similar virtues, she 
died in the full hope of the same blessed immortality, leav- 
ing all who knew her to regret her loss, though it was the 
poor that mourned her most. Their three surviving chil- 
dren proved themselves the worthy descendants of such 
parents. There is a time coming when families of twenty 
descents may be regarded as less noble, and as possessing 
in a much less degree the advantages of birth ; for, partly 
it would seem, through that often marked though inexpli- 
cable effect of the organisation of matter on the faculties of 
mind, which transmits the same character in the same line 
from generation to generation, and partly, doubtless, from 
the influence of early example, they all inherited, in no 
slight or equivocal degree, the virtues of their father and 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 387 

mother. A general massiveness and force of intellect, with 
a nice and unbending rectitude of principle, and great bene- 
volence of disposition, were the more marked character- 
istics. Catherine, the eldest of the three, was married in 
1 80 1 to her cousin Isaac Forsyth, banker, Elgin, the brother 
and biographer of the well-known tourist ; and, after enjoy- 
ing, in a singular degree, the affection of her husband and 
family, and the respect of a wide circle of acquaintance, 
she died in the autumn of 1826, in her fifty-seventh year. 
Isabella continued to reside in her father's house at Cro- 
marty, which maintained in no small degree its former 
character, and there cannot well be higher praise. None 
of Mrs Forsyth's old pensioners were suffered to want by 
her daughter ; and as they dropped off one by one, their 
places were supplied by others. She was the effective 
and active patroness, too, of every scheme of benevolence 
originated in the place, whether for the benefit of the poor 
or of the young. She was married in 18 11 to Captain Alex- 
ander M'Kenzie, R.M., of the Scatwell family, and died in 
the spring of 1838, in her sixty-eighth year, bequeathing 
by will three hundred pounds, to be laid out at interest for 
the behalf of three poor widows of the place. John, the 
youngest of the family, quitted his father's house for India, 
as has been already related, in 1792. He rose by the usual 
steps of promotion as Resident at various stations, became 
a senior merchant, and was appointed to the important 
charge of keeper of the Company's warehouse at Calcutta, 
with the near prospect of being advanced to the Board of 
Trade. His long residence in India, however, had been 
gradually undermining a constitution originally vigorous, 



388 A TRUE STORY OF THE LIFE OF 

and he fell a victim to the climate in 1823, in the forty-fifth 
year of his age. He had married an English lady in Cal- 
cutta, Miss Mary Ann Farmer, a few years before, and had 
an only daughter by her, Mary Elizabeth Forsyth, who now 
inherits her grandfather's property in Cromarty. His char- 
acter was that of the family. For the last fifteen years of 
his life he regularly remitted fifty pounds annually for the 
poor of Cromarty, and left them a thousand pounds at his 
death. The family burying-ground fronts the parish church. 
It contains a simple tablet of Portland stone, surmounted 
by a vase of white marble, and bearing the following epi- 
taph, whose rare merit it is to be at once highly eulogistic 
and strictly true. 



A SCOTCH MERCHANT. 389 

WILLIAM FORSYTH, ESQUIRE, 

Died 

the 30th January 1800, in the 78th year of his age ; 

A Man loved for his benevolence, 

Honoured for his integrity, and 

revered for his piety. 

He was religious without gloom ; 

Cheerful without levity ; 

Bountiful without ostentation. 

Rigid in the discharge of his own duties, he was 

charitable and lenient in his judgment of others. 

His kindness and hospitality were unbounded; 

and in him the Destitute found a Friend, 

the Oppressed a Protector. 



On the 7th August 1808, aged sixty-six, died 

ELIZABETH, 

His beloved Wife, 

In obedience to whose last desire 

this Tablet is inscribed to his Memory, 

which she ever cherished with tender affection, 

and adorned by the practice of similar virtues. 

With characteristic humility 

she wished that merely her Death should be recorded 

on this stone ; 

and to those who knew her no other memorial was wanting, 

nor is it necessary, even if it were possible, 

to delineate to the passing Stranger 

the beauty of her deportment, 

the strength of her understanding, 

and the benignity of her heart ; 

but rather 

to admonish him, from such bright examples, 

that the paths of godliness and virtue lead 

to happiness on earth, 
and the assurance of joys beyond the Grave. 



Of their children they survived Patrick, who died at the age of 20 in 
the East Indies ; and James, Isabella, Margaret, William, and 
Elizabeth, who, with their Parents, were buried in this place. 



THE END. 



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